The FT has a sympathetic article on Amartya Sen's new memoir which stresses his recurrent battle with mouth cancer. Perhaps, as Rousseau and Dr. Johnson have pointed out, nothing concentrates the writer's mind so much as the knowledge that death is imminent. Sen's work- though of an abstract and mathematical type- has always had a literary quality which set it apart from that of others in the same field.
But, a devotion to literature is not without an 'opportunity cost'. One may be too ready to believe one's own confabulations. Paranoia beckons. Moreover, people think you might just be a big fat liar even if you pretend to be using statistics and advanced mathematical methods.
Consider the following-
Sen resigned from Nalanda in 2015 after Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist BJP had taken office and blocked money to a university that it suspected was anti-Hindu.
This isn't what Sen said in his resignation letter. He mentions President Pranab Mukherjee- who belonged to the Congress Party- as being dilatory. He does not say any money had been 'blocked'. Why? Because it wasn't true.
This is the text of Sen's resignation letter to the Board.19 February 2015
I am writing to you on a subject relating to the governance of Nalanda University in which all of us have been very deeply involved. As you know, at its last meeting on January 13-14, 2015, the Board decided unanimously (in my absence - I had recused myself – leaving George Yeo to chair the Board meeting) that I should be asked to serve as Chancellor of Nalanda University for a second term, when my present term expires in late July.
So, Sen resigned before his term expired. Economic theory explains why being a 'lame duck' occupant of an office (i.e. one who, it is common knowledge, can't continue to hold it) reduces its effectiveness and efficiency. Why did Sen not allow things to take their course? The Government would have had the headache of finding some other candidate and would probably have preferred to maintain the status quo.
The unanimity was, I was pleased to be told, firm and enthusiastic, coming from all members of the Board , which – as you know – consists of representatives from different Asian countries (including China, Japan, Singapore and others), in addition of course to Indian academics and professionals.
Sadly, the board don't seem to have told Sen that a new VC was needed. Gopa Sabharwal didn't have the skill-set for the job. Had Sunaina Singh- or someone similarly experienced and high powered- been put in charge, Nalanda might have kept its sheen. Obviously, if Sabharwal was Manmohan's choice, then Nalanda had to keep her so long as Singh was PM. But they should have got shot of her the moment Singh was turfed out of office.
However, the decision of the Governing Board becomes operational, according to the Nalanda University Act of Parliament, only after the Visitor of the University (the President of India, ex-officio) gives his assent to the decision. I understand that the Board’s decision was conveyed to the Visitor in mid-January, immediately after the meeting of the Governing Board of the Nalanda University, drawing his attention to the urgency of the matter, since the planning and implementation of new teaching and research arrangements are proceeding rapidly in the newly functioning University.
So, only a month had passed since the file was sent to the President. Sen still had five months to go as Chancellor.
More than a month has passed since then, and it now seems clear that the Visitor has been unable to provide his assent to the Governing Board’s unanimous choice, in the absence of the Government’s approval. The Governing Board has not been favoured with a reply to its request, either from the President’s office or from the Ministry of External Affairs. As Board members are aware, our Visitor – President Pranab Mukherjee – has always taken a deep personal interest in the speedy progress of the work of Nalanda University, and given that, we have to assume that something makes it difficult – or impossible – for him to act with speed in this matter.
The Government said that the Board had not sent the approved minutes of the Board meeting. Sen said this had been sent a fortnight earlier- so, in other words, the delay was only of a fortnight. The problem was that the minutes were draft minutes, not approved minutes.
Non-action is a time-wasting way of reversing a Board decision, when the Government has, in principle, the power to act or not act.
The Government did indeed have the power to act but only by due process of law. It needed approved minutes, not draft minutes.
This, as you might recollect, also happened to the revised Statutes that the Governing Board passed unanimously last year. Many of these Statutes (including the one pertaining to the Chancellor’s term of office) also never received formal acceptance or rejection from the Ministry of External Affairs, which had the role of coordinating with the Visitor’s office.
Yet, the amendment act was passed in March 2014. The name of the Foreign Service officer concerned is mentioned in it. Clearly revised Statues were formally accepted.
It is hard for me not to conclude that the Government wants me to cease being the Chancellor of Nalanda University after this July, and technically it has the power to do so.
But, if so, why resign in February? Sen, it seems, can not just read the mind of the Government, he also feels obliged to do whatever will make them happy!
This delay as well as the uncertainty involved is leading, in effect, to a decisional gap, which is not helpful to Nalanda University’s governance and its academic progress.
If some harm had been caused why not mention precisely what that harm actually was? Since Sen was not involved in the running of Nalanda, we can't accept his assertion that there was a 'decisional gap' because it could only be hearsay. He needed to give at least one example of the harm he refers to.
I have, therefore, decided that in the best interest of Nalanda University, I should exclude myself from being considered for continuing as Chancellor of Nalanda University beyond this July, despite the unanimous recommendation and urging of the Governing Board for me to continue.
The best interest of a University are served by Chancellors who help them become better. Sen was right to resign. He hadn't helped Nalanda at all.
I take this opportunity also to thank the Governing Board very warmly for its confidence in me.
As you would also remember, there was considerable disquiet among Board members about the Government’s evident unwillingness to appreciate the international character of Nalanda University and to pay appropriate attention to the multi-country Governing Board of Nalanda.
Nalanda did not have an international character. It was a White Elephant financed by the Govt. of India.
Prior to August 2016, India contributed Rs 684.74 crore (about a 100 million dollars) for the construction of the university, China and Australia granted 1 million USD each, Thailand gave 1,32,000 USD and Laos contributed 50,000 USD. After that date all expenditure was by the Indians. What happened was that the Japanese had spoken airily of giving a hundred million, or even a billion, dollars. This was credible because the Japanese had already built a highway and a monastery and a pilgrim hostel in that area. They could have used Nalanda to train the management cadre in their car and other factories in India. China stumped up some cash so as to counter Japan. But once it became clear that the Japanese weren't going to give any money, it became obvious that the place would be a moribund White Elephant for which the Indians, and the Indians alone, would have to pay. This is why the relevant legislation linked representation on the Governing Board to financial contribution. Sen had got it into his head that the Indians would pay while foreigners got to make decisions. The wonder is that Sen didn't demand that the Taliban and ISIS get Departments to themselves at Nalanda from where, protected by diplomatic immunity, they could wage war on India. Sen's lack of generosity in this respect is truly shameful.
In particular, the Governing Board was kept completely in the dark about an attempted unilateral move by the Government to rapidly reconstitute the entire Board, and to do this in violation of some of parts of the Nalanda University Act (reflected especially in the letters that have already been sent out to foreign governments, departing from the provisions of the Act as it now stands).
If the Government was acting in an ultra vires manner, Sen's duty was to challenge their actions in a court of law. Why did he resign and run away instead?
I write this letter with a heavy heart since re-establishing Nalanda has been a life-long commitment for me (as it is important also to you). While classes have very successfully started, on a small scale, in two Schools (the School of History and that of Environment and Ecology), we are, as you know, in the process of planning other Schools, including a School of Economics, a School of Public Health, and a School of Buddhist Studies, Philosophy and Comparative Religion, and also of augmenting the intake of students.
They had about 20 students- though some ran away.
I have been personally much occupied with this planning, but I will, of course, pass on the work-in-progress to the Vice-Chancellor.
I am also sad, at a more general level, that academic governance in India remains so deeply vulnerable to the opinions of the ruling Government, when it chooses to make political use of the special provisions. Even though the Nalanda University Act, passed by the Parliament, did not, I believe, envisage political interference in academic matters, it is formally the case – given the legal provisions (some of them surviving from colonial days) - that the Government can turn an academic issue into a matter of political dispensation, if it feels unrestrained about interfering. As a proud and concerned citizen of India, I take this particular occasion to communicate my general disquiet in public, which is why I am openly sharing this letter.
The problem here is that Sen, as Chancellor, had a duty to bring a law suit against the Government if it is really true that they had acted in an ultra vires manner. 'Disquiet' may be felt by anyone. Something more than expressions of disquiet are expected from the senior-most office holder in a public Institution.
Why does the FT say that Modi blocked money due to Nalanda till Sen resigned? From where could they have got such an idea? There is no mention of any such thing in any article published on this issue. On the other hand, there are allegations that Sen had demanded 'diplomatic immunity' for Nalanda staff (even if they were Indian citizens) and that Pranab Mukherjee had put his foot down. This was explained as a tiff between Mukherjee and the PMO. The allegation was that Manmohan's daughter's chums had been given lucrative positions at Nalanda despite the fact that they had no relevant qualifications.
The Indian Express reported, in Feb 2014, that Sen had threatened to resign so as to get the Congress Government to release more money for his White Elephant.
The government’s dream Nalanda University project has run into trouble with Chancellor Amartya Sen threatening to resign after the finance ministry raised pointed queries on the financial management of this mega revival plan. The crisis, which has been simmering for a while, is believed to have turned ugly just before general elections are to be announced. At its crux is a massive Rs 2,727 crore (about 400 million dollars- double the amount for building an IIT capable of teaching 10,000 students) financial support package to the university over a period of 12 years. The finance ministry’s Department of Expenditure has asked the Ministry of External Affairs, the nodal ministry for the project, the reasons why government rules should not apply to the project. The university is yet to begin functioning fully, and its campus is still under construction in Rajgir. It has a small office in Delhi for the vice-chancellor and faculty members and aims to start its academic session this year. The provocation for the crisis, sources said, was the huge expenditure being incurred on maintaining the governing body of the university, known earlier as the Nalanda Mentor Group, as well as the tax-free salaries to the tune of $80,000 dollars per year to some of the top functionaries of the university. Faculty salary packages range around $50,000-55,000 per year. Upset by these queries, Sen – who is part of the 12-member governing body – conveyed to the MEA at the highest levels that he would resign if such objections were not opposed and quashed, source said. He is learnt to have given a similar message to the Prime Minister’s Office and the Planning Commission. Taken aback, the government is said to be looking at some of the amendments to the Nalanda University Act that could possibly grant full financial autonomy and also a permanent tenure to the university top brass. The university’s argument has been that full autonomy must mean complete financial independence. But since the government is putting much of the money, the finance ministry feels there has to be oversight and accountability – a view that has takers even in the MEA.In other words, Sen threatened to resign even when Congress was in power simply so as to extort money from a poor country for a White Elephant vanity project. A year later he actually went ahead and resigned. This was a smart move. Students at Nalanda were soon reporting that they were being sexually harassed or that they could not even get yoghurt to eat!
What of the next claim made in the FT article?-
Modi’s government denied Nalanda permission to celebrate Buddha’s birthday, even though the philosopher-prince gave the world a creed that was quintessentially Indian.
This is utterly mad! Hindus consider Buddha an avatar of Vishnu. They gladly celebrate Buddha Jayanti. Modi has always used his Vesak (Buddha purnima) addresses to highlight important issues- e.g. COVID safety precautions.
A few years ago, Sen was to appear on the BBC’s Hard Talk programme and noticed he was described on the teleprompter as a “Hindu scholar”. “I said: ‘Are you going to take this off, or shall I leave?’ They took it out.”
Sen was interviewed by Zeinab Badawi- who is Sudanese-British. She did her PPE from Oxford. It is unlikely that she thought of Sen as other than an Economist who had won the Nobel Prize and who had been associated with John Rawls.
The title of Sen’s book is drawn from a Tagore novel, The Home and the World,
which ends with Muslims killing Hindus of Sen's class. Tagore predicted the ethnic cleansing in Sen's ancestral East Bengal.
which is about the complexities of India’s struggle against western domination that was also immortalised in a Satyajit Ray movie of the same name. To Sen, the title evokes the secular, intellectually curious and tolerant climate in which he was raised.
His people were ethnically cleansed from Dacca.
Sen recalls visitors to the ashram included Eleanor Roosevelt, Chiang Kai-shek and, of course, Mohandas Gandhi, who was murdered by a Hindu nationalist.
Unlike Sen's people in East Bengal who were murdered by Muslims- unless they ran away.
Today’s Indian rulers, Sen fears, are attempting to stamp out its tradition of openness.
Gandhi told Bihari Congressmen that he knew which of them had been killing innocent Muslims. But Gandhi would take no action- legal or political- against the guilty. Gandhi and Nehru presided over the worst slaughter of Muslims India has ever seen. The Indian Government stripped citizenship from Muslim refugees who wanted to return to their ancestral homes. It granted citizenship to non-Muslim refugees and continued to harass wealthy Muslims who stayed behind till they too left. That's what happened to Salman Rushdie's father- as his novel 'Midnight's Children' shows.
The BJP is rewriting history to excise the secular legacy of the early Moghuls, such as Akbar, who had as many Hindus at court as Muslims, and, of course, Ashoka, who preached tolerance for all beliefs.
Ashoka is fine. Akbar isn't- more especially for Muslims because he introduced sajda to the throne and proclaimed a new Religion.
“India has a long history of pluralism that is now under threat,” says Sen.
Sen doesn't appear very tolerant of Hindu nationalism.
“Akbar’s court was thriving in the late 16th century when they were burning heretics in Rome’s Campo di Fiore.”
Actually Akbar put down 'heretical' sects- e.g. Madhavis- if they posed a danger to his rule. Even Aurangazeb didn't kill heretic Muslims unless they were viewed as politically dangerous. However, there can be no doubt that 'heresy' attracted high penalties in rural India.
Sen attaches some of the blame to VS Naipaul, the late Nobel Prize-winning Trinidadian Indian, who depicted the history of India’s Muslim dynasties as a dark night of temple-razing oppression. “What Naipaul wrote was absolute nonsense,” says Sen. “A complex story has been simplified by a group of very determined people.”
Sen's own story features flight from his ancestral East Bengal. There isn't any thing very complex about that.
Sen’s story as a cosmopolitan in the world has not lessened his sense of Indianness. Though he has lived abroad since 1971, he only has an Indian passport.
Because India does not permit dual citizenship because...then people like Rushdie could be Indian citizens!
Before the pandemic, he would visit Shantiniketan up to five times a year, where he keeps a house (aided by a life-long right to free first-class travel on Air India — a massive perk that followed his Nobel award).
Air India turned into one big money-pit because of such largesse on the part of politicians.
In the past few years, a heated debate has erupted about the legacy of British imperialism. Sen’s view is that India took a lot from Britain — “the powerful journalistic tradition”, “parliamentary debate” and “Shakespeare’s English”. But such upsides came in spite of the British empire, “which, at best, gave India very little of value”, rather than because of it. “You have to separate the two,” says Sen. “The empire denied India its freedoms.”
The reason Sen's ancestors supported the Brits was because British rule gave them more security and self-respect than Muslim rule.
When Sen arrived at Cambridge in 1953, his landlady, Mrs Hangary, worried that his brown skin would stain the bath tub.
If we are to believe Sen. The trouble is we don't. Cambridge landladies discussed the various sorts of tenants they might get. Brown students had been studying at Cambridge for almost a hundred years by the time Mrs Hangary met Sen.
By the end of his tenancy, she had become a campaigner for racial equality. “She went from racist to jihadi for equality,” says Sen, chuckling. “I adored Mrs Hangary.”
Almost half a century later, Sen became master of the college that gave the world Isaac Newton, Lords Byron and Tennyson, John Dryden, Bertrand Russell, Jawaharlal Nehru and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Tony Blair called Sen personally to persuade him to take the job. At the college meeting to decide the next master, the chair said: “Sen is the only person this year whom we might someday consequently regret not having elected.”
So the College followed a 'regret-minimizing' strategy. Shame Sen did not in his work on Choice theory.
Sen, chuckling, adds: “This was considered a ringing endorsement. It was a masterclass in English understatement.”
Sen appears to be unaware that the 'regret' mentioned may have been associated with accusations of racism in years to come.
The walls of his living room, to which, at glacial speed, we have long since returned, display a life of the mind. There are portraits of John Rawls, the Harvard political philosopher, who was arguably the most influential liberal theorist of the late 20th century, and Willard Van Orman Quine, the linguistic philosopher, each of whom were close friends (both painted by Rawls’s wife, Margaret).
Sen gave a joint course with Rawls and Arrow back in the late Sixties. This was quite an accolade. Sadly, we now consider both Rawls and much of Arrow to be stupid shite. Why? They didn't get that, because of Knightian uncertainty, regret-minimization is the only rational strategy.
There is a Halo light that Sen uses to illuminate himself for Zoom. And there is a painting of Nalanda university by a Chinese artist. Somewhere in the house I imagine there must be parts of the ancient bicycle that Sen used to traverse West Bengal when he was researching the famine.
Sadly, that research was worthless. Consider the following-
This makes it appear that Sriniketan was a commercial enterprise. It was actually a philanthropic Institute of Rural Reconstruction staffed by trained agronomists and supported by Quaker and other charitable foundations. Tagore's son, Rathindranath, had qualified in Agricultural Science from Illinois in 1909. The reason Sen, who was ten or eleven when the famine was at its worst, does not remember much about it was because the Tagores and their supporters had been working hard to help the local people not just to grow more food but also to tackle malaria, cholera etc. It should also be pointed out that farm workers were given grain, oil, salt etc. as well as money payment and thus money wages might fall when the value of payment-in-kind went through the roof.
Sen mentions the 'Agro-Economic Research for Eastern India'. He does not tell us that this was started in Shantiniketan in 1954. There is a good reason for the lacuna in the data set. War conditions made nonsense of the figures which in any case were not representative of the District- never mind the Province as a whole.
Sen's readers- Americans and so forth- assume that the figures he quotes are official statistics properly compiled by responsible officials. The truth is they were just local account books kept by the good and kind people at Shantiniketan & Sriniketan. Where there were free markets in grain etc. they might give us a trend rate but not an actual figure for wages since good people don't pay the market clearing rate. They pay what they can afford. No doubt, there may be strings attached- e.g. the promise to abstain from liquor etc. However, during war time, these figures can't tell us about anything except the brave attempt by good people to ensure that kids like Sen didn't have to see starving people collapsing and dying around them.
Looking around, it strikes me that Sen is more than an economist, a moral philosopher or even an academic. He is a life-long campaigner, through scholarship and activism, via friendships and the occasional enemy, for a more noble idea of home — and therefore of the world.
But what he campaigns for is yet more pi-jaw and virtue signaling though this creates a big back-lash. The problem with telling lies is that you get into the habit of telling bigger and bigger whoppers. Finally, nobody believes you.
In this age of identity politics, this Bengali savant refuses to be defined by labels. “Home and the world are the same thing for me,” he says. “It always was.”
Why stop there? Say 'Death and Life are the same thing to me just like utile Truths and Stupid Lies'.
John Maynard Smith showed that 'uncorrelated asymmetries'- e.g. things about yourself you can't easily change- are important because they dictate 'bourgeois strategies'- i.e. rules which give a rigid designation to rights and obligations holders- which turn out to be eusocial. Rawls thought there was some 'veil of ignorance' behind which perfect symmetry was restored. He didn't understand that if Smith and evolutionary biology are right, then every rational person would refuse to get behind a 'veil of ignorance'. Sen makes a similar mistake in his 'parable of the flute'. Still, both Rawls and Sen served a virtue signaling purpose till, quite suddenly, everybody discovered that their theories or ideas of Justice were 'anything goes'- i.e. any type of tyranny could be justified under their rubric.
Armchairs are good as places to sit. But armchair philosophy involves shitting as much as sitting. The thing is a nuisance. It must be curbed.
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