Back in 2006 Amartya Sen said to Pranab Bardhan in an interview-
"In some ways people had got used to the idea that India was spiritual and religion-oriented.This is because this idea was true. India was the birthplace of Hinduism and Buddhism- religions to which about a quarter of the global population are affiliated or greatly influenced by. Indian religions, by and large, are more 'spiritual' and less bound up with a materialist eschatology- e.g. bodily resurrection- than the Semitic religions whose spread has been more closely connected to conquest and vigorous proselytism.
That gave a leg up to the religious interpretation of India,
Islam has a religious interpretation of India as a place where there are a lot of Kaffirs who should be killed, converted or ethnically cleansed. Sen's own family had to run away from Bangladesh because it was Muslim majority. The Victorians, who ruled India, too spoke of 'heathens' in that country who must be incapable of self-rule because they chose to remain willfully bind to the Paradise freely offered to them by Lord Jesus Christ.
The fact of the matter is that India coheres only because of its 80 percent Hindu majority. Where Hindus are not in the majority there is secessionist sentiment.
There may be a non-religious interpretation of India. But it is foolish and does not accord with the facts.
despite the fact that Sanskrit had a larger atheistic literature than what exists in any other classical language.
This is because Sanskrit has a larger surviving literature period. But it has a vanishingly small atheistic literature. Greek may have had a large atheistic literature- but little has survived. Can Sen point to a single extant atheistic text? No. He quotes the founder of a wholly Theistic Hindu sect.
Madhava Acharya, the remarkable 14th century philosopher,
He was a famous religious preceptor (also known as Vidyaranya) not a philosopher and was associated with the resurgence and reassertion of Hinduism as represented by the establishment of the Vijaynagar Empire.
wrote this rather great book called Sarvadarshansamgraha, which discussed all the religious schools of thought within the Hindu structure. The first chapter is "Atheism" – a very strong presentation of the argument in favor of atheism and materialism.
Only in the sense that Luther's attacks on the Catholic Church were very strong arguments in favour of the sale of indulgences. Maadhava's first chapter discusses the 'sweet spoken' Charvaka materialists who speak of the hedonic pleasures of this world without, however, disputing that 'Purva Mimamsa' type materialistic ritualism promotes similarly utilitarian ends. In other words, the sensible portion of Charvaka atheism is contained within Uttara Mimamsa. The foolish aspect of atheism- viz. its cutting itself off from spiritual means of individual and collective self-defense and upliftment- is associated with helplessness in the face of superior power- e.g. that of the Muslim. Thus, Maadhava moves next to Buddhism which admits the spiritual element is necessary for Liberation and emphasizes rational organization and collective action- id est the formation of a Sangha. However Buddhism has a bizarre ontology and, in any case, had disappeared under the Muslim onslaught. Thus, Maadhava moves on to Jainism- which had just about managed to survive before moving on to deal with Advaita's main rival at that time- Vishishtadvaita. I personally have no quarrel with Theistic Dualism since ordinary people like me are wholly dependent on God's free gift of Grace.
We feel Maadhava's interpretation of Adi Sankara's message makes more room for 'Purva Mimamsa', Yoga, Sankhya, etc and is thus more orthodox. Hence, Maadhava is a champion of resurgent Smartha religion in the context of India's liberation from Islamic tyranny and bondage. It is hilarious that Sen- whose family had to run away from Muslim majority East Bengal- picks upon a champion of a type of resurgent Hindu pride, cohesiveness, and organising ability, which was severely lacking in his own sept, so as to sing the praises of his own cowardly and immeserizing atheism, stupidity and general spiritlessness.
Maadhava says that 'the mass of men' only observe customary shibboleths- like Sen-tentious political correctness in crap University Departments- because they want to live well here and now. This is not philosophy though it may provide some pseudo-intellectuals a good livelihood in one way or another- indeed, such fools may hope to enjoy immortal renown! However, Maadhava depicts the atheists as quoting the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad to justify their view. Thus, Maadhava is saying 'the charlatans who seek to make a living by trafficking in metaphysics do so by pretending to have a cure for a mischievous delusion. But, since they can present no proof that God does not exist, they have to be content with quoting Scripture albeit with a perverse intention.'
Maadhava's importance lies in the fact that he was asserting monism- as well as the notion of a jivanmukta (he also wrote the Jivanmuktaviveka) as well as the sanctity of the monastic path (he himself became the Jagatguru of the Sringeri matha)- while dismissing, his rival, the Dualists, as hypocritical and materialistic- just like the mercenary Ritualists and the meretricious Atheists.
It is foolish to say that a literature which distinguishes an atheistic school of philosophy- for which there is no other evidence- only for the purpose of condemning rival sects as being nothing but greedy materialists or else deluded fools or charlatans (as described by the supposed atheists)- is itself atheistic. This would be like claiming that Christian literature has a large sub-genre dedicated to the praise of witches and the worship of demons. The truth is that witches and demons and so forth only arise in Christian literature so that an opportunity is afforded for the condemnation of sin. Thus, if 'Mammon' is mentioned, the intention is not to glorify Beelzebub, whose other name it is according to a Father of the Church. Rather it is to castigate avarice. But, if a rival sect is doing well in material terms, a reformer may well equate it with Mammon- that is the Devil. This does not mean such a reformer is contributing to the literature of Satan worship.
In his interview with Pranab Bardhan, Sen goes on to say-
One of the things I tried to argue in The Argumentative Indian is that there’s a long tradition of philosophical argument. But all of that philosophical argument was conducted under the auspices of Religion. There were no secular Institutions of Higher Education. Some religious preceptors may have referred to an atheistic tradition as having existed and whose traces might be found in popular opinion, but this was a straw-man of their own construction. Its utility was to provide an excuse to describe rival sects as atheistic. This is not philosophy. It is the type of empty polemics Sen himself indulges in. He pretend that all the other economists are evil and he alone is a Saint. But this is merely a self-aggrandizing fantasy of his own which the West lets him indulge in by reason of 'intellectual affirmative action'.
People ask, “Which really reflects Indian culture? Is it this or is it that?” What reflects Indian culture most are the arguments themselves,
every one of which was framed within a sectarian context
rather than any resolution in one direction or the other.
But there really was a resolution in favor of Hinduism in the form in which it exists now.
The Hindu sectarian view of Indian nationalism is based on a historical misinterpretation, and then they distort history by rewriting textbooks.
But the distortions introduced by Marxists or Libtards were worse.
The religious rhetoric is exaggerated to suggest that the dominant religion is all there is in terms of the Indian cultural history.
Why did Sen's family have to run away from Dacca? Why was Pranab Bardhan's father's house in Calcutta packed to the brim with 'refugees from East Bengal'? It was because Islam had become the dominant religion there. Hindus were given short shrift. Pakistan was created only on the basis of an Islamic duty to kill, convert, or at least separate from 'idolatrous' kaffirs- i.e. Hindus like Sen and Bardhan. That is all there is to that story though, no doubt, stupid Leftists pretended that the problem had been created by 'feudal elements' and that once the sub-continent embraced Socialism (which happened in the Seventies) religion would cease to have any political or diplomatic salience there. This was a pipe dream. Socialism perished. Religion thrived.
That point of view is very limited, very misleading, and indeed, wrong.
Which is how come India is ruled by an atheistic Socialist, not a champion of Hindutva.
Then if you add to it the nastiness of sectarian politics whereby regarding other communities to be either inferior or nasty or having treated Hindus badly in the past,
but Sen's family and the East Bengali relatives of Pranab Bardhan were actually treated badly. That's why they ran away to India
like Muslim conquerors are supposed to have,
like ISIS and the Taliban are supposed to have been nasty to Kaffirs
then you generate needless anger and hostility.
But its cool to generate anger and hostility against Modi or the BJP
Sometimes they try to be quite nasty to other communities, and sometimes pretty violent. Some killings have occurred, especially in Gujarat in 2002 and in Bombay about a decade earlier.
But where did ethnic cleansing happen? The answer is the Kashmir Valley where Hindus were killed or chased out. Many are still living in refugee camps forty years later. In Gujarat and Bombay, there was retaliatory violence against Muslims. In Kashmir, there was unprovoked aggression against an indigenous community. Sen is of refugee ancestry himself. Bardhan had refugee relatives. Yet both find it pays better to be blatantly pro-Muslim and anti-Hindu. Would Sen say 'Islam has a large atheistic literature. It is false to say that Muslim countries are really constituted on the basis of Religion or that the citizens of those countries have any great attachment to Islam?' No. The fucker would be fatwa'd.
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