A dozen years ago Bengali economists like Pranab Bardhan and Amartya Sen had some influence in India. Today, they are a joke. Why? They held absurd beliefs. Those beliefs had motivated their migration- India was a shithole doomed to becoming ever poorer and weaker- and which motivated their lecturing India on its need to embrace irreversible decline from some ancient standard of rational civilization.
Here are the two Bengali-wogs in conversation-
Pranab Bardhan (PB): Your book, The Argumentative Indian, challenges the rather naive interpretation of Indian culture in the West—that analytical reasoning is quintessentially Western, and that Indian culture is primarily concerned with spirituality and uncritical religious faith.
How could this cunt's book do so? Sen was a professor in the West. He dressed and talked like a typical don.
It is a fact that the axiomatic method is Western. But analytical reasoning is not constrained to be axiomatic. It could be categorical or intuitive or constructive or purely pragmatic. However, it is also a fact that the West considered itself to have true Faith in Christ immune to any sophistry of reason or spurious evidence of witchcraft or other devilry. The heathens- more especially darkies- were incapable of true Faith. Their Magi tricked them with legerdemain. The good news was that they could just as easily turn on their Witchdoctors and smash their idols.
Christianity is founded upon the mystery of Faith. Criticism is otiose. At best it is a sophistry of a sophomore sort which might take in shallow minds. Mysterium fidei- mysteries of Faith are defined by the Vatican as 'mysteries that are hidden in God, which can never be known unless they are revealed by God'. Bardhan and Sen live in a deeply Christian country- also the most powerful in the world- yet they are not aware that Christianity- like every other Religion- is based on Faith in that which is beyond criticism because it is a mystery known, indeed knowable, only to the Creator.
Amartya Sen (AS): That interpretation of Indian culture and civilization has been dominant in the West’s relation with India.
No. India being poor and weak and a source of cheap raw materials and the intellectual equivalent of coolie labor has been the dominant factor determining the West's relation with India. Some hippies went to India because it was cheap and dope was plentiful. But they also went to other poor countries and, if crazy enough, converted to stupid cults there.
When the British were first establishing themselves in the 18th century, people like William Jones and others were quite interested in Indian mathematics and astronomy, and science generally.
William Jones learned Sanskrit. Interest in Indian mathematics peaked some time around 1820. De Morgan promoted Master Ramachandra some thirty years later but held a more prejudiced view of the Asiatic incapacity for abstraction. The joke was that it was the Continent which was pulling ahead of England in Mathematics at exactly this time.
But by the time the empire settled down, James Mill—who was very proud of the fact that he wrote his history of India without going to India at all, and who also didn’t speak any Indian language—argued that if there was anything to Indian culture, it’s just kind of spiritual, religious stuff.
No. It was superstitious heathen mumbo-jumbo. The natives must be converted to Christianity so as to become more productive and easy to govern. Also, this way, their souls would not be condemned to perdition. Evangelical Religion was the ally of Benthamite Utilitarianism.
Whereas Jones had discussed important astronomers and mathematicians in ancient India, like Aryabhata, who rejected the prevailing view of the sun going around the earth.
Yes. Yes. Aryabhata invented zero. But he was a pure Aryan. Since then the Indians had become miscegenated and thus should be ruled by purer Nordic breeds. What is the point of rehashing that shite?
PB: This is in the sixth century?
AS: He was very late fifth century—his major book was completed in ad 499. He also discussed diurnal motion of the earth and why is it that objects don’t get thrown out into space.
His students and followers, like Varahamihira and Brahmagupta, argued that every object attracted every other—early speculations on gravity.
What caste did these guys belong to? The fact is some descendants of priestly clans went in for a bit of maths and they preserved the innovations their ancestors had made. It is likely that there were non-Brahmin castes which employed statistical and discrete maths methods. That's a legacy worth cultivating. Sadly, apart from the late Roddam Narasimha, few remained in India to try to do so. I may be wrong about this. I certainly hope I am.
Making India the domain of religion played a part in the undermining of Indian culture.
Sadly, it is apparent there would have been no Indian culture if Religion, using hereditary priestly and other such castes, had not preserved it. William Jones would have had no one to teach him Sanskrit in Bengal. It would have been Japanese or Chinese savants who rediscovered India's Hindu past. However, they would soon have been chased away by some indigenous Taliban type outfit determined to destroy the last vestige of infidel 'Jahilliyat' on their territory.
To some extent, India fell into the trap.
Fuck off! India immediately started producing Maharishis (like Tagore's dad) and Mahatmas and Swamys in industrial quantities.
Rather than contesting that there was quite a strong tradition of science,
not of modern science. The truth is, as in the Islamic world, there had been stagnation. But then India was part of the Islamic world- like Greece, which too had gone backward.
and also one of atheism
There was no atheism. The 'sweet talking' Charvaka was a hedonist. But if God's gift of grace is gratuitous, as Theists believe, then we may as well enjoy life while trusting in that Grace. The Charvaka doctrine is perfectly compatible with the Ajivika teaching re. a fixed number of rebirths.
and materialism
Purva Mimamsa is materialistic as is 'aashrav' theory. Karma binding particles may be material but so very small their discovery may be beyond the capacity of natural science.
(the earliest atheistic verses you see in the Rig Veda itself, which is around 1500 bc),
At best that is an agnostic verse. The fact is 'Ka' is itself a name of the deity. The Chandogya clarifies its relationship to Kha. To be fair, neither Sen nor Bardhan was a Brahmin. They were under no obligation to know this stuff.
they said, “Okay, the West is terrific in science, but we are very good in spirituality.” It’s something quite important to resist.
Science costs money. Spirituality doesn't. The theory of comparative advantage explains why Scientists go to study in the West while spiritual seekers study Yoga in India.
PB: But the really more dangerous oversimplification about Indian culture and history today is the creation of the Hindu chauvinists in India.
Both Bardhan and Sen came from East Bengal. Cruel Hindu chauvinists drove them out of their ancestral home- right? Wrong. If there were no 'Hindu chauvinists', Sen & Bardhan's people would have had nowhere to run to.
AS: I agree it’s dangerous, and a distortion. It’s not entirely unrelated to the colonial history.
Yes. That colonial history would be on going if it hadn't been for people like Swamy Dayanand and Swamy Vivekananda. Tagore, too, in his vacuous way, warned the Hindus to unite against resurgent Islam.
In some ways people had got used to the idea that India was spiritual and religion-oriented.
Because it was true. In Communist governed Kerala, we saw firebrand Communists like TV Thomas or Gauriamma turning back to their ancestral faith in old age. Now Ministers are not embarrassed to be seen entering temples and performing rituals. Elsewhere, Communism has collapsed.
That gave a leg up to the religious interpretation of India, despite the fact that Sanskrit had a larger atheistic literature than exists in any other classical language.
It has no atheistic literature whatsoever. A book written by a Religious preceptor which says such and such doctrine of the rival sect is tantamount to atheism is not contributing to atheistic literature. We don't say that the Bible is an atheistic book because it condemns the worship of the Golden Calf.
Even within the Hindu tradition, there are many people who were atheist.
There wasn't a single atheist. It is a different matter that there were differences between those who thought that it was enough to perform the right rituals at the right times and those who demanded something more in the way of ascesis. Also, lots of people think God will save us coz He lurves us even if we sometimes have a wank or look at dirty pictures. I'm not talking about myself. It's this other bloke I know.
Madhava Acharya, the remarkable 14th century philosopher, 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. The second chapter is on Buddhism, which is treated as an offshoot of Hinduism. And then it goes through the other schools of Hinduism.
I have dealt with this here . Sen is telling stupid lies.
PB: What is your take on cultural relativism?
Economists think 'culture' is related to a set of norms or 'Aumann public signals' which determine correlated equilibria. Cultural relativism is the view that ethical and social standards reflect the cultural context from which they are derived. We may say we behave differently if we work in an office rather than a brothel because the 'work culture' is different. But we may behave very differently at home because our family culture is different. However, for economists, this does not matter too much because there is always an incentive compatible mechanism available to change the outcomes of any particular culture. Thus if raucous behavior is rewarded in the office, the place will start to feel like a bordello. A religious family may make the kids read Darwin and so forth so as to get into Medical school. Incentives matter. Cultures are plastic and the outcomes they produce change when incentives change.
Sen, obviously, will say something utterly foolish because he is crap at both Econ and Philosophy and lacks any type of common sense.
AS: Where it’s most diverting is in the field of relativist ethics.
That field is shit.
It is argued: How can you criticize other countries because in their context, their ethics is the right one?
You can look at outcomes. If there is a deontic obstacle to improving mechanism design then identify it and say so. Thus, if you have a 'hereditary principle' such that only the son of the P.M can become P.M and if this leads to bad outcomes then train your guns on the 'hereditary principle' and show how it can be made more elastic and less obstructive.
That view overlooks the immensely constructive possibility of arguments that are used in the context of a debate in one culture but where the argument draws also from another.
This is not constructive at all. It is stupid. If you say 'but they do things differently in China', the obvious rejoinder is 'why don't you marry China if you love it so much? Anyway, Korea is quite different in this respect.'
And it’s always been like that, even religion. Buddhism arose in India. It’s the only agnostic world religion.
It is not agnostic at all about the possibility of full liberation and the attainment of Buddhahood. This does not mean it denies that there are gods like Hanuman and Ganapati who are worthy of worship.
But it went out to Japan, China, Korea, all kinds of places from India. In contrast, the purely cultural relativist position would be to ask: What has a Korean or a Japanese got to learn from the Indians on Buddhism?
No. A cultural relativist would only be concerned with how Buddhism as a whole differs from some other Religion- e.g. Christianity- as a whole. If you belong to the same religion, you aspire to have the same religious and spiritual culture.
A similar thing can be said today. To say of some practice that’s prevalent in some countries, like stoning of adulterous woman in Afghanistan or genital mutilation in North Africa, “Look, that’s their practice, you can’t criticize,” is ridiculous.
Will this cunt criticize the practice of FGM in India by Muslims? The US passed a law against FGM in 2017 but the Supreme Court declared it to be unconstitutional. Other attempts to prosecute Muslim Doctors in America for this have been thrown out by the Courts. Anyone can criticize shite. Yet, the fact is American prosecutors have not been able to put anyone in jail for this. As for the 'stoning of adulterous women in Afghanistan', the Taliban are welcome to reintroduce the practice. The US will keep very quiet.
More generally, a particular action is or isn't ethical, from the utilitarian p.o.v, if the alternative is worse. It may be better to kill adulterous women rather than permit a vendetta between clans. FGM in India and America appears to be indulged in by an educated and affluent community presumably because it improves life-chances for their girls and increases their prestige- and hence ability to do business deals- in a commercially very important part of the world.
That critique may not survive even in Somalia or Afghanistan, provided a free discussion is possible,
For a 'free discussion' to be possible, you'd have to defeat the Taliban- which America failed to do- or El Shabab in a Somalia from which America ran the fuck away after 'Black Hawk down'.
involving women as well as men, rather than dissidents being threatened or being put in jail.
Sen lives in a cloud cuckoo land where infinite resources are always available to ensure 'free discussion' can go on endlessly till everybody reaches agreement.
One of the strongest arguments that shows the weakness of the cultural relativist dismissal of dissent is the need that authorities have to put local dissidents in jail for taking a “foreign” point of view.
They don't just put them in jail. They use them for slave labor and sell their organs for a profit. The result is that their Nation gets stronger. It can then undermine 'foreign' points of view by inflicting economic and military pain upon foreign countries. America got stronger by beating and locking up Commies. The Soviet Union was a Great Power when the Gulags were bursting at the seams. Now it is China which has risen so rapidly that it may overtake America economically by the end of the decade.
The fact is, outcomes matter. We prefer not to lock up dissidents because we don't give a shit about their stupid ideological pronouncements. We do care if they are good dentists or good at delivering pizza or whatever else it is they do for a living. My fixed point of view is that Sen eats dog turds. It has done him no harm whatsoever. On the other hand, once I win Miss Teen Tamil Nadu and become a TikTok twerking star, cultural relativists will be totes jelly of me. That would be cool.
And there are some strong intellectual arguments for universalism.
No. There are shite pseudo-intellectual arguments for eating dog turds and pretending that represents universalism or relativism or whatever.
Just as Chomsky claims that our ability to use certain forms of syntax and language are present in all human beings,
Though some people clearly lack this capacity for reasons medical science elucidates. It is a different matter that after the end of the Human race some 'universal' properties may be found to have obtained. But there would be arbitrary reasons for this- i.e. particular evolutionary bottlenecks.
similarly there are a number of capacities to think on your own, if you try, that exist among different people.
These capacities or capabilities can only be known at the end of time. All that is observable is particular outcomes. Thus we don't really know who has the capacity or capability to become a TikTok twerking star. We can imagine a world in which my twerking becomes an ironic meme and so I become famous.
PB: Some of your critics in India—and there are some, true to the argumentative tradition—have said that in this book you have indulged in the same kind of partisan selection of evidence from history that you find in others.
The difference is that Sen knows no history. He can't understand shit.
They say that spanning more than 2,000 years, for your point about tolerance and pluralism and the inclusionary view of Indian identity, you choose figures like the Emperor Ashoka
who was unusual in that he killed Jain monks
in the third century bc, Emperor Akbar of the 16th century
who was unusual in that he forced 'sajda' to the throne and created his own religion
, and then Rabindranath Tagore
who warned that Independence would mean Hindus getting killed and losing their property in East Bengal. He wasn't tolerant of modern industrial civilization at all.
in the 19th/20th century. And they say that others could choose historical figures representing the opposite: orthodoxy, intolerance, etc.
Ashoka, Akbar and Tagore were poor scholars who were incapable of conducting a rational debate with their peers. But they are strongly associated with Religion. Sen, with typical fatuity, chose figures of idiosyncratic but definite Religious significance to argue that Indians weren't obsessed with Religion and Spirituality.
AS: I am not claiming that Akbar or Ashoka represent anything like the “essential India.”
An essence is something true in all possible worlds. It is true that Akbar or Ashoka represent something that was true in all possible worlds where India remained majority Hindu. This is because their policies were popular with Hindus. By contrast, Pakistani Schools dropped all mention of Akbar save as a rival to Sirhindi. At the College level he is praised as a conqueror and administrator but severely criticized for favoring Rajputs and betraying Islam.
My point is that they represent a very strong perspective that has come up again and again, which includes a lot of tolerance.
Among Hindus, sure. But, if Muslims rule, Akbar is not praised. He is condemned.
But of course there is also a long history of extreme intolerance and nastiness.
Which is why both these guys had relatives who fled East Bengal.
Indian culture has this variety that needs acknowledgement.
But Pakistani culture does not.
Since the focus has been so much on the other side, I am using my focus as a correction. I have quite an elaborate discussion of science and mathematics in India.
It is second hand and misleading.
This is not a claim that everyone was a scientist in India. It’s a claim that that tradition exists.
It may have continued to exist in Hindu pockets- e.g. Kerala- but there was little left elsewhere. Jones was taught by a Pundit of Sen's own caste at Nawadwip. But the Indian had nothing scientific to impart.
When we try to draw on the past, we draw always in a selective basis.
Which is what the Hindutvadis do.
When the French and the British and the Americans were drawing on the European past in saying there is a democratic tradition, and they referred to Athens and ancient Greece—over a small number of centuries from sixth, fifth, fourth, third century BC—they were not looking at the Goths and Visigoths and Ostrogoths.
But the Europeans had beaten back Islam and would soon go on the offensive against it. On the other hand the Goths and Teutons and Anglo Saxons had their own democratic traditions and this too was emphasized. Consider the Isle of Man. It remains outside the United Kingdom and is self-governing. It gave women the vote in 1881. At the time, the argument was made that the ancient Celts and Norsemen had a democratic form of government whereas the Greeks and Latins tended to absolutism. Sen knows little of European history and less than nothing about India.
Because in the context of the debate on democracy in America in the late 18th or early 19th century, the relevant reference is Athenian democracy.
No. The references are to the Common Law tradition which involved Coke's 'Greek speaking Druids' and the notion that Northern Europe had always had limited monarchy with all fiscal powers in the hands of an elected Parliament.
Ostrogoths, Vikings, and in a different way, intolerant masters of the Inquisition
Latins are bad. They are absolutists. Northern Europeans age good. They believe there can be no taxation without representation.
are no less “European” than ancient Greeks.
But those Goths and Vikings and so forth accepted Christianity and then Greek paideia. The Dark Ages were relatively brief. Since then there had been a Renaissance, a Reformation and the spread of Scientific Enlightenment which, for the first time, went beyond what the ancients had discovered in Maths and Science. But none of this would have been possible without the military defeat of Islam.
Nevertheless, one could say if you’re looking for representative Europe, it ain’t like that.
No. You could only say that there was one type of paideia- that of the Greeks- which barbarian invasions might interrupt or snuff out but which reasserted itself once Christendom could defend itself. It should be remembered that the Jews had adopted Greek before Christ was born. Second Maccabees was written in Koine.
However, the fundamental premise of the Glorious Revolution, the American Revolution and the French Revolution was that Anglo Saxons and Franks and other 'Nordic' races had always rejected absolutism. All Fiscal matters were decided by Parliament.
Looking back on our history, it is not surprising that Gandhi or Nehru would emphasize those parts of the Indian tradition of public reasoning that were particularly relevant for modern India—the first poor country which chose to be an uncompromisingly democratic, multi-party state.
This is false. Ceylon got universal suffrage in 1931. The Brits could have given India the same thing at that time. It was the Indians who could not agree to accept it. However, there was no guarantee that India would be a 'multi-party state'. Gandhi had demanded that the Brits transfer power to the INC because it represented the whole of India. As Govind Vallabh Pant said 'Italy has its Il Duce, Germany has its Fuhrer, we have Mahatma Gandhi'. Sadly Gandhi turned out to be as stupid as Musso or Hilter.
I don’t think any of them claimed that their focus was the only tradition that existed in India.
They did claim it was the only worthwhile tradition in India. That's how politics works. You don't say 'my rivals are just as right as I am.'
This point is worth mentioning because there is a tendency in the West to think of something of which they approve as being a Western thought.
Nothing wrong in that if the thought is a good one or represents a value which we need to hold dear. Saying 'this is exactly what Mummy and Granny and so forth wanted me to understand' will increase your commitment to that truth.
Describing Iranian dissidents as “ambassadors of European thought” is
true enough if that is what they themselves claimed
to add insult to injury because there is also a history in Iran of democracy going back to the third century BC.
No there isn't. The Iranians, quite sensibly, chose a monarch who turned into a Universal Emperor before the Greeks or Romans had any such thing.
And to be told that no, no, no, you are actually implants of John Stuart Mill, misdescribes the nature of Iranian dissidence.
Unless that is exactly what they themselves claim. Their first Constitution however was modelled on that of Belgium. French, not English, was more intellectually attractive to the Persians.
PB: Democracy obviously has been a favorite cause of yours.
Because praising Hitler wouldn't go down well with Sen's colleagues at Harvard.
Another favorite cause has been that of mass education, basic health, and women’s rights.
Why not promoting Niceness and condemning Nastiness? Why is Sen being so mean?
When you combine these two sets of causes, one cannot help but notice that there could be a disjuncture, not in the realm of your ideas
because even if shit is not homogeneous, why bother creating disjunctures within it?
but in the real world of politics.
Or just the real world full stop.
The conditions of basic health and sanitation and primary and secondary education are simply appalling in India.
Because it is as poor as shit. Economists like Sen and Bardhan must share some of the blame for this. What was so difficult about saying 'get rural girls into big factory dormitories or else condemn the country to becoming an involuted Malthusian shithole'?
Yet, the electorate does not penalize politicians when they fail to deliver these services.
They do if a better candidate is available.
And the conditions continue to be appalling, election after election.
Because India is not doing sensible things like getting rid of paternalistic labor and land and environmental laws. Thus the formal sector stagnates while the informal sector can't gain economies of scale and scope.
AS: A very interesting question, Pranab. Let me say three things. First, democracy is basically a permissive system.
No. It is a system for deciding who gets to rule. It is not the case that I can get to be Minister of Finance coz I really really want to the job.
Some of the issues of deprivation are very easy to seize in terms of media and political opposition.
So guys can sell papers or get some money for organizing rallies if there is a lot of deprivation. But soon enough nobody buys those papers or attends those rallies because doing so does not put food in your tummy.
Like famines.
East Bengal, where these dudes come, had two big famines because of a transition to elected Muslim government.
Hard to win elections after a famine.
Shurawardy won after a famine. Mujib would have won after the Bangladesh famine if he and his family had not been butchered.
It’s hard to prevent newspapers writing editorials,
It is easy to do so by sending goons to rape their wives and stick knives into them.
unless you censor them, criticizing the government if famines occur.
Why bother with censors? Beating and killing is faster, cheaper and more effective. Did Sen's people run away from East Bengal because they were afraid of being censored or tried for sedition? No. They ran because they didn't want to be raped or knifed.
So these things get immediately politicized.
Shit can be more and more politicized decade after decade and yet turn into stinkier shit
The rest require a lot of effort. In India, the gender issue—when I first started working on it, you were one of the first to be involved in that. You wrote this great paper … what was it called?
PB: “Life and Death Questions in India.”
AS: I think you have had the same experience as I had, the people treating it as your and my amiable eccentricity that we are concerned with the gender issue. But nobody thinks like that today. If the Indian Parliament is debating today as to how to ensure that a third of the parliamentarians are women, something has changed—and changed as a result of politics, particularly the women’s movement.
Traditionally Indians opposed abortion. But the feminists wanted it. So now these nutters are saying abortion is good unless it is sex-selective. The truth is some types of contraception are good. Abortion is bad. As for reserved seats for women- this is absolutely essential because male politicians often feel safer in jail and so their wives and mistresses get elected to carry on their crooked business.
One of the things I discuss in The Argumentative Indian is that despite the fact that since the economic reforms in 1979 the Chinese have grown economically much faster than India, life expectancy in India has increased about three times as fast as that in China over the last quarter century.
So what? China got richer and more powerful. India could have done so but chose not to because virtue signalers- many domiciled abroad- prevailed.
The reason for it is not so much that the Indians are getting things right, but that the Chinese are getting things pretty bad.
Nope. It makes sense to encourage 'diseases of affluence' so that you will have a smaller dependent population going forward. The chain-smoking Chinese were contributing to the exchequer but would be dead by the time their pensions became due.
Earlier, because of their left-wing communist commitment to basic health care and basic education, the Chinese did a lot of very good things in terms of spreading public education and health care.
No. The Chinese did a great job surviving a stupid regime. When that regime became less stupid the hard-work, thrift, filial piety and entrepreneurial instincts of the Han Chinese quickly pulled the country up.
Often, the health care was of a very low quality, but nevertheless, there was universal coverage.
No there wasn't. Communist propaganda claimed that barefoot doctors from about 1968 onwards were ubiquitous. It simply wasn't true. Once those doctors could buy shoes, they legged it from the countryside. On the other hand, the Chinese had cultivated a knowledge of herbal and other remedies over thousands of years. These were a highly civilized people held back by crazy rulers.
At the time of the economic reform, the Chinese did away with universal social insurance of health. One morning, simply abolished it. Rather than 100 percent of the people being covered,
by a wholly imaginary provision
70 percent, minimally, are not covered by any kind of health insurance today.
No. By 2011 95 per cent had access to health insurance. The Chinese first got richer and then provided a safety net (though this was based on the houkou system such that migrants got less entitlements) just as the Taiwanese and the Koreans and so forth did. Sen believes you must put the cart before the horse. First send everybody to Cambridge and Harley street and then get them jobs in sweat-shops.
You can’t imagine in a democratic country an established right of citizens could have been compromised so easily.
This nutter is of Indian origin. If the 'established right' of Indian citizens not to be forcibly sterilized could have been easily compromised, how the fuck were 'established rights' to education and health and livelihood be secured? Passing laws is easy. But if the State runs out of money, entitlements will be curtailed. Look at what the Sri Lankans or the Lebanese are going through right now.
On top of that, people publicly grumble in India all the time. Every now and then, that confronts politicians with the need to do something, which the Chinese government does not quite have to face.
No. China has to do something about popular discontent. India doesn't provided the opposition party is even shittier than the ruling party. In the one case there could be a Revolution. In the other case you just get Parliamentary Musical Chairs. Thus an Imran Khan or a Gota Rajapaksha might lose office today but hope to return when the next cretin fucks up as badly.
By not knowing that, for example, SARS had in fact surfaced in November of one year but would not be revealed until the April of the following year, China put things in a closet, which prevents a kind of inescapable improvement that you see in India.
China has a hundred times less COVID death than the US despite having four times the population.
So my second point is that the democratic critique is still, even in India, making a difference.
One difference it made is that the Hindutvadis came to power in what is after all a Hindu country.
My third point is that democracy is primarily, as I see it, not just voting, but public reasoning, government by discussion.
This is not true. An enlightened despotism may feature both but a democracy will not do so because the guy with the votes gets to tell everybody else to go fuck themselves unless they have good ideas in which case they are stolen without any acknowledgment
To initiate the discussion is a contribution to democracy.
No. It may be a pleasant enough way to pass the time but it is not a contribution to democracy. Knocking on doors to get the vote out matters. Armchair discussion does not.
You might not have thought that your “Life and Death Questions” was a contribution to Indian democratic practice, but that’s what it was because a lot of people read it and were inspired by it and moved by it.
But they didn't live in India or were already hoping to move out on the basis of some worthless credential.
For years, people used to say every time I gave a lecture, “You are going on and on about democracy, but if democracy is so good, how come India doesn’t grow at all?”
India had a comparative advantage in labor intensive low-skill industries. It should have made it easy to set up giant factories employing rural girls and suitably submissive male migrants. Instead it did the opposite. Thus it fell behind South Korea and Taiwan and then Indonesia and Vietnam and now Bangladesh.
My answer was that economic growth depends not on the harshness of the political climate, but the friendliness of the economic climate.
Provided you specialize according to the theory of comparative advantage. If you keep doing stupid shit even your relatives, let alone your friends, will give you a wide berth.
People don’t ask me that rhetorical question any more because India’s economic growth is quite high now.
Because it found a relatively labor intensive type of intellectual coolie work while taking power away from the Income Tax Commissioner or the Minister and giving it to billionaires named Adani or Ambani.
But the country is no less democratic today—it is not democracy that had to be abandoned to grow fast.
India overcame a foreign exchange constraint because of software, BPO, etc but large parts of it haven't grown, they have merely staggered on.
PB: But people do suggest—in the China-India comparison, for example—that your argumentative Indians are merely verbose; there is more talk, less action.
Sanjay Gandhi's slogan was 'More work, less talk'. He scared the shit out of people.
They take a long time to come to a decision. In some matters of economic development, you need to make decisions quickly. In 1990, the Chinese did not have any superhighways, and now, in superhighway mileage, they are the second in the world next to the United States. Try to have a highway in India and there will be endless discussion. There will be land disputes, agitations by people who may be uprooted, they will then go to political parties, and some political party will take a position, “No, you cannot do that,” etc.
Quite true. Look at the Farmer's agitation. However, States can do more than the Center in this regard by beating and knifing agitators. China has succeeded because you are never more than ten minutes away from guys who can beat the fuck out of you if you cross the line.
AS: There are certain things that are much easier to do in China. There if you have to uproot people to build a highway, you can build it and not worry too much about their approval. It doesn’t matter what rights they may have. If you want to make the country in such a way that autobahns could be constructed very quickly, or—as Mussolini used to claim, the trains should be run on time—if that’s the only value, then I think there is a lot of merit in giving up democracy.
Democracy does not matter. Beating people does. At a pinch, Democracies can do this even better than Dictatorships. Indeed, the thing is cheaper and more thorough because it is spontaneous. But, in a democracy, we are quick to change our tune when we see which way the wind is blowing. Disapproving looks from grannies are even more effective than goons dealing out beatings. It appears that Zelenskyy has prevailed over Putin. But his people aren't giving kisses and cuddles to Russian soldiers. They are killing them.
But if you take rights of others seriously, if you regard that citizens and their claims to their little space make a difference, then I am afraid the longer route becomes inescapable, no matter if it delays the autobahn or if the train to Rome arrives 25 minutes late.
Don't take rights seriously unless they are linked to incentive compatible remedies under a bond of law. In other words, if it does not pay somebody to make you whole, in case of a rights violation, you don't really have any effective rights at all.
Secondly, quickness of decision is not necessarily the best recipe for good action.
But failure to decide a matter within the relevant window for action is always bad.
The Chinese, with the same rapidity as building superhighways, also abolished the universal insurance of health.
Which was a sham.
In India, that would have been delayed, and would have been stopped.
Though the thing was a sham, Government doctors who did not show up for work would still be paid after the deduction of a kickback.
China executes every week more people than India has executed in its entire history since independence 60 years ago. I don’t think I want to be the citizen of a country that does things like that.
But the Chinese prefer it to becoming poor and weak- unless they can, like Sen and Bardhan, emigrate to America.
I am happy enough to be a citizen of a country
but not work there
that discusses the rich variety of Chinese experiences in a democratic way and decides that we do want some of these things, but not others.
And will get neither.
PB: The culture in which you and I grew up, the Bengali culture, is suffused with the ideas of Tagore, but the rest of the world—and even the rest of India—are more familiar with the ideas of Gandhi. What were their different views of India?
Tagore was a sensible man. He tried to set up an Agricultural Institute and sent his son to study Agronomy in America. That failed so he fell back on what he was good at- viz. training artists. He tried to get his people to stop clamoring for Independence because they'd get their throats slit in East Bengal.
Gandhi got paid to promote mercantile Gujarati and Marwari communities. He talked incessant holier than thou bollocks but did manage to delay the departure of the Brits. Also he helped get rid of the Muslim majority areas so Hindu India could have a strong center.
AS: Tagore is, of course, immensely known in Bangladesh and in parts of India in a way that he is not anywhere else in the world. Gandhi, because of politics being a more communicable process, also because of his influence on Martin Luther King and Mandela and others, has a much bigger set of admirers.
Mandela says he admired Nehru, not Gandhi. Both Tagore and Gandhi are seen as religious and spiritual figures not argumentative atheists.
They both were extremely keen on a nonsectarian India.
They didn't want the Brits to leave- in Tagore's case for an excellent financial reason
I think both would have approved—I flatter myself in thinking—of my project in The Argumentative Indian.
They wouldn't have read that shite.
On the other hand, their traditions were different. Gandhi was much more religious in a traditional sense than Tagore was.
Tagore was much more religious in the traditional sense than Gandhi was. This was because he was a Brahmin and the son of a Maharishi of a religious sect of which he had to take over the leadership. That's the reason he had to ponce around in robes while sporting a great big beard. It is not clear whether he thought Brahmo Samaj should remain separate from 'Hindu Samaj' but this aspect of his pre War thinking was overtaken by events.
Tagore did believe in God, but he was God-respecting, God-loving, again and again describing God as “my friend” as opposed to someone you’re really in awe of.
Krishna and Arjuna are friends. But Arjuna experiences awe when Krishna discloses his cosmic form. In the Sufi tradition, Abraham is the friend 'Khalil' of God. This does not mean Abraham is lacking devotional piety.
With Gandhi, some of the God-fearingness came in. I would put him somewhere between the God-fearing part of Christianity and Tagore’s God-loving, which in a sense is a development out of the Vaishnava movement in Hinduism,
Gandhi was Vaishnava. Tagore's ancestors were Shakta.
as well as the influence of Sufis that came into India on the Islamic side and led to the kind of harmonious combination in the writings of Kabir
Kabir may have been born a Muslim but his esoteric philosophy is Hindu not Sufi. Raja Ram Mohan Roy however was strongly influenced by Sufism.
and Dadu and others four or five hundred years ago.
again, Dadupanthis class as Vaishnava. One sect of Dadupanthis became militarized and acquired a high reputation for valor amongst Hindus.
That kind of religiosity is very important for Tagore.
He had inherited leadership of his grandfather's sect.
But that’s easily combinable with science. Tagore was a great believer in science education;
Tagore was actually quite intelligent. Gandhi wasn't.
Gandhi was not. Their attitudes toward birth control were quite different. Tagore was in favor of family planning.
Margaret Sanger converted him to her cause.
Gandhi was very much against it. He was in favor of abstinence. Tagore actually has a passage where he comments on the tremendous fear of sex that Gandhiji had.
This was because his daddy was a member of a sect whose head kept fuckin the wives of his disciples and giving them syphilis. There was a big scandal about this- the Maharaj libel case- a few years before Gandhi was born.
I can’t say that Tagore was a great model of sexual indulgence. His wife died, of course, quite young, but it seems from all accounts that he developed some kind of a crush on a very talented Argentine woman named Victoria Ocampo. And she too fell very much in love with Tagore. But Tagore was very clumsy and tied up in his own thoughts, and it didn’t really lead to a … not only not consummation, but not to any kind of further pursuit of that relation.
Apparently, Tagore's English secretary queered the pitch by trying to grab her pussy. But she was engrossed in another affair so nothing could have come of it anyway. Still Tagore did grab her titty though he wasn't looking at her when he performed this 'gesture of pagan tenderness'.
PB: He was into his seventies when they became …
AS: It began earlier, but Tagore’s involvement lasted through his seventies. But now that I have entered the seventies, I don’t necessarily accept that there is something clinically wrong in having an involvement! Gandhi, of course, also remained much more of a politician than Tagore.
Gandhi was a politician. Tagore wasn't.
When Tagore and Gandhi were both involved in the anti-untouchability movement in the 1930s, and the Bihar earthquake took place in 1934, in which a lot of people died, Gandhi immediately converted that into a political advantage by saying that this is God’s punishment for untouchability.
Though there had been no earthquake before he decided that Dalits weren't sub-human.
It seemed like an effective argument.
No. It was ridiculed.
Tagore was appalled by it, both because he thought that introducing politics into a situation in which a lot of the people killed were children who had nothing to do with untouchability was a pretty nasty thing to do.
Tagore, like other sensible people, told Gandhi to quit being so fucking stupid. Sometimes he listened. Sometimes he did not because his donors gave him money and his Ashrams were money-pits. Kumarappa, a Chartered Accountant with an Econ MA refused to pay Gandhian nutjobs a per diem for Earthquake relief work. Why? Because they were useless. Gandhi protested but could do nothing about it. A Bania who fights with an Accountant gets a bad reputation among fellow Banias. I think Gandhi had arranged Marwari money for Tagore's Shantiniketan so Tagore had to rub along with that maha-crackpot.
He also thought that earthquakes have scientific causes that people should understand, about the nature of the earth and the tectonic movements. Despite the fact that Gandhi was such a moral person, he was certainly not above using very
stupid not
instrumentally convenient arguments for pursuing a good cause.
Or a bad cause
In that sense, he emerged much more as a consequentialist than he actually, in his theory, ever revealed.
No. He emerged as a stupid crackpot. But, Amartya Sen is equally stupid.
PB: Let’s end with some discussion of your new book, Identity and Violence. I’d like you to relate it to this raging debate that’s going on, both in Europe and the United States, on multiculturalism. In Europe, it’s raging because they’re discussing what to do about the radical Muslims in their midst. But it’s come up in this country as well.
The solution was to lock up the radicals and keep an eye on mosques. Some countries, like France, went in for hijab bans and so forth. Europe can take care of itself.
AS: The new book is really concerned with the importance of the recognition that we have many different identities,
we have many different traits but only one identity. A different trait may determine our action in a different context- this does not mean we have become a different person.
and that violence is often cultivated and fomented in the world—political violence in particular—by denying all identities other than one, one belligerent identity.
Violence occurs when there is competition for title to land or wealth or reproductive or other scarce resources. Mimetic desire is about wishing to gain the identity of the other- e.g being the boss.
You’re suddenly told you are a Hutu, and Hutus hate Tutsis.
Very true. Sen suddenly told Partha Dasgupta he was a Hutu and Hutus hate Tutsis. Partha immediately went to South Africa to kill Archbishop Tutu who explained to him that what Sen wanted him to do was to spurn Tootsie rolls.
And you are a Hutu exclusively.
Hutu and Tutsi were mutually exclusive categories. There was a question as to who would dominate the other. In Rwanda, initially it was Hutus. Then Tutsis prevailed.
You are not a Rwandan,
Hutus weren't told that. They were told that Tutsis must be killed or driven out of Rwanda otherwise they'd take it over.
not an African,
No. Hutus were told they were Rwandan and African. They'd be safer if no Tutsis were left in Rwanda or nearby African regions.
not a human being—identities that Tutsis also have.
But Tutsis didn't have a Hutu identity. That was the problem. Sen's people didn't run away from East Bengal because the local Muslims denied that they were Bengalis or Indians. They just wanted them out so as to take their land and money and jobs and some of their better looking women. Land is scarce. That is why having a tribal type of identity is helpful. In the event of conflict you have guys to back you up. Sadly, since Hindu Bengalis- like Kashmiri Pandits- did not have a martial reputation and so other Hindus didn't do much to help them. Why? If it came to a fight these guys would just run away again. Let them bleat on about human rights till the cows come home. There's no point defending them. Gandhi and Nehru made this very clear to the East Bengali Hindus. By contrast Punjabi refugees were welcomed and given the opportunity to eject Muslims so as to have land on which to settle. Why? Punjabis will fight for what they own though, once the Brits departed, they had to run from Muslim majority areas. But they were happy to return the favor where it was safe to do so.
It’s by cultivating one single bellicose identity that violence is often fostered.
Violence is only checked by having a superior and credible threat point. Identity doesn't matter at all. Identical twins might try to kill each other so as to be sole inheritor.
I saw that as a child. You were probably a little too young, but you might have watched a little bit of the aftermath of that, of how the Hindu-Muslim identity suddenly took over from the broader identity as Indian and human being, or neighbor.
Sen's ancestral Brahmo Samaj was started by two guys who used their own money to lobby Westminster to send more White settlers to Bengal. Why? Because otherwise the Muslims would take back power and these two guys would lose their wealth. One of them was Tagore's grandfather.
The book is really about the evil of the illusion of a single identity.
Vedanta teaches that the illusion that you are separate from the Godhead is what causes rebirth. But the proper identity to have is wholly monist. On the other hand some 'yogijivis' can exist in multiple bodies simultaneously. The rest of us have single identities though we may have a big bundle of disparate traits or preferences.
The subtitle of the new book is The Illusion of Destiny—the idea that somehow you have one pre-determined identity and that determines what you can do and how you should live.
If you are born as a cow you can easily overcome the illusion of destiny by becoming a Professor of Economics. Your work-product may be pure bullshit but at least you have confirmed Sen's thesis.
But, in fact, it’s up to us to determine what relative importance to attach to our different affiliations.
Only because we have a single identity. Otherwise you could be both the Pope and the Chief Rabbi at the same time.
The Rwandan could say that he is a Rwandan and a Kigalian and an African and a human being, just as he can also say, “I am a Hutu.”
He could say he was a cow. That wouldn't have saved him from being killed. It was safer to say 'I'm a Hutu' though this might mean you have to be part of a killing squad.
Not only do terrorists, but also those who want to reduce the prevalence of terrorism, often fall for the same trap.
Very true. Guys who want to prevent terrorism start chopping off the heads of innocent people while saying burka burka jihad. It happened to Tony Blair. Then it happened to Obama. Sad.
A Muslim person has many identities.
No. He has a single identity because he has only one body. He may have many different traits and affiliations and preferences, but- if he is truly Muslim- he has only one Religion.
A Muslim person may have an Islamic identity.
No. To be called a Muslim, a person must profess or by common knowledge be acknowledged as having a wholly Islamic identity. If he says I am both a Muslim and a worshipper of Satan, he is not a Muslim.
To say of a person- his identity is X means that X completely determines his actions. Thus to say Mr. Khan's identity is Islamic is to suggest that Mr. Khan will refuse to do anything forbidden by his religion- e.g. wearing pure silk shirts or eating pork. Identity obtains where for all practical purposes one person can be substituted for another. Two Medical Doctors, in medical matters, have this type of identity but only for that limited purpose. They can treat each other's patients but are not allowed to sleep with each other's wives.
This can be very important if they are religious. But they may also have an identity as a mathematician, identity as a squash player or cricket player, identity as a conservative or a liberal or a radical in politics.
By reason of having a physical body, we have one and only one identity however many predicates may be applied to us- e.g. 'is a mathematician', 'is a cricketer' etc. Sen thinks each valid predicate is itself a separate identity. Why? In his professional work he was concerned with 'relation algebras' which work by 'hypostatic abstraction' whereby a predicate is turned into a relation- e.g. X is intelligent entails X has intelligence. But even if this intelligent X is also cute it isn't the case that there are two identities here, one cute and one smart.
People have different traits and preferences and, when making decisions, one trait or preference may dominate. If we hired X and are asked whether it was because X is cute, we might reply 'No! X is smart! That was the only reason'. Obviously, if you happen to be sleeping with X, your testimony may be disregarded.
Bangladesh separated from Pakistan not on grounds of religion but on grounds of language, literature, culture, and politics, secular politics.
No. It separated because West Pakistan would not accept an East Pakistani Premier though he won the elections fair and square. East Bengal chose to join Pakistan knowing full well that language, literature etc. separated them from those in the West. But religious affiliation- or the desire to get rid of Hindus- predominated. Indeed, Bangladesh continued to get rid of Hindus. Sen is living in a fantasy land.
But increasingly the battle is engaged by saying, “Yes, the only way of thinking of a Muslim is in terms of Islamic identity,”
No. Battles are 'engaged' by actually fighting not talking bollocks. Intellectual debate about 'Islamic identity' would require instruction in the Quran and hadith and various madhabs and a proper study of Islamic history, sociology, etc. Pretending people have multiple identities does not help.
and then to claim, as Prime Minister Tony Blair does, that Islam is a “religion of peace.” That is just as much of an overgeneralization
No. It is the truth. Islam is a religion of peace though no doubt there may be struggles over scarce resources. The important thing is that after the struggle subsides, the realm should be pious and peaceful.
as the terrorists’ statement that Islam is a religion that requires you to kill those who are opposed to Islam.
Which is not true. Jihad is a fard kifayah- i.e. a duty which can only be collectively, not individually, discharged and that too only by a proper authority. But it must have a reasonable chance of success in any case. There may be a duty to emigrate from infidel lands but there is no duty to kill a few people and then get completely massacred.
There have been Muslim rulers who behaved just as the terrorists suggest.
But remained rulers because they succeeded- which proves jihad was possible, indeed desirable.
Sultan Mahmoud of Gazni, who raided India a number of times and looted and destroyed temples, killed a lot of people, was certainly a Muslim.
He is praised as a Ghazi. He also persecuted Ismaili 'heretics' who shifted to Gujarat.
But so was Akbar,
No. He was certainly born a Muslim but important Indian Muslim jurists have said that he was not a true Muslim. Sirhindi was. This isn't really a subject a non-Muslim can pronounce judgment on.
immensely tolerant, whose codification, I believe, of minority rights
Hindus were the majority. Why does Sen not know this?
and the need for public discussion
the Emperor's will was absolute. He liked listening to scholarly debate but he made up his own mind.
had a very strong inspiring effect in the construction of Indian secularism, even democracy
It had zero effect. Indian 'secularism' and democracy is entirely the legacy of the British and the lawyer politicians they chose to hand power to. Why did Akbar not inspire democracy and secularism in Pakistan? The answer is that nobody gave a toss about him or Ashoka or Aryabhata.
insofar as democracy is seen as a government by discussion.
That's not what it is. It is government by elected legislators. They may or may not discuss things.
Both of them were Muslims. They shared a religion but not politics, nor their civic beliefs.
Mahmud did not create a 'din illahi'. Akbar did. Islam in India decided Sirhindi was right. Akbar was wrong.
The term “moderate Muslim” is a similar confusion.
No. It denotes a large class of people in a convenient manner. In any given situation it has a pragmatic meaning. 'Will X be comfortable with attending such and such event?' is a question we might ask. The answer we are looking for is- 'Yes. I know X. He is a moderate Muslim. He will have no objection to others drinking wine though he will not himself partake.' This fills out our picture of X. We will pass the word that people can eat or drink what they like but they shouldn't get boisterous and try to force wine down X's throat or try to sit on his face.'
You’re trying to capture in one word the moderateness of politics and moderateness of religion.
Which, in fact, are highly correlated in many contemporary contexts.
But, in fact, you could be a very strongly religious Muslim and yet very moderate in politics.
In 1946, it turned out that the vast majority of Muslims backed the Muslim League. They were the moderates. Those who backed the crackpot Gandhi were a lunatic fringe.
Jinnah was the heir of the 'naram dal' leader Gokhale though he was also close to Tilak. But Gandhi was a crazy extremist with bizarre eschatological beliefs.
At the time when Mahatma Gandhi and Muhammad Ali Jinnah were debating, Gandhi was very keen on keeping religion out of political divisions.
The reverse is the case. Gandhi brought religion into politics after Jinnah had previously removed religion as an obstacle to Hindus and Muslims coming together against the British. The same thing happened in the debate between Ambedkar and Gandhi. In both cases Gandhi claimed to be more of a Muslim, or more of a Dalit, than his interlocutor. Both grew to hate that hysterical crackpot.
But he was deeply religious.
But he was a crackpot. He claimed to know Hindu scripture but didn't even know Sanskrit. He immediately lost any debate he attempted with Hindu priests.
Jinnah was very keen that religion—Islam, Hinduism, etc.—be brought into politics.
No. He wanted the Hindu elites to do a deal with the Muslim elites- who trusted him to represent them because he was smart and incorruptible. This was impossible because Hindu majority areas wanted Hindu rule while Muslim majority areas wanted Muslim rule. This meant an exchange of populations was inevitable with the remainder being consigned to second or third class status.
But he was not a particularly good Muslim. He ate pork, he drank whiskey, and so on.
But he delivered what the Muslims voted for. That's what elected leaders are supposed to do.
The tragedy is that it’s not only those who instigate violence, but also those trying to fight that violence, who get imprisoned by that impoverished idea that we have one principal, unchosen identity over which we have no command.
When it comes to religion, we are welcome to convert or migrate. The tragedies associated with violence can be overcome only by 'mechanism design'- i.e. figuring out a way everybody is better of cooperating rather than resolving problems of scarcity by killing or driving each other out. Since this involves using economic theory properly, Sen and Bardhan can't contribute anything useful here.
The need for choice and responsibility, along with clarity of ideas, deserves greater recognition.
No. Clarifying Sen's ideas involves polishing a turd. Don't do it. Choice exists because scarcity exists. The way forward is to figure out ways to do more with scarce resources and then devising an incentive mechanism to implement that solution. Gassing on in a Gandhian vein about nasty Jinnah who ate pork and nice Gandhi who dressed like a tramp won't help anybody. Still, Sen is teaching stupid adolescents in Amrika. Why not let them believe he is a cross between Mother Theresa and Mahatma Gandhi? After all, India is very spiritual- right?
It can even help to build peace.
By boring everybody to death? Sadly, that doesn't work. Students soon fall asleep when you talk bollocks of this sort. Building peace is about credible threat points on the one hand and incentive compatible mechanism on the other. Ukraine needn't have turned into a shitshow. Them guys should have kept their nukes. Alternatively, Putin should have been bought off with more gas pipelines. Still, it's a good idea for advanced countries to get rid of dirty energy, dirty money, dirty politics and the dirty dirty war which Zelenskyy's folks are fighting with such valor.
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