The Persuasive Indian

When Penguin released Amartya Sen's latest book The Argumentative India in early August, the book became a metaphor for both Sen, the man, as well as Sen, the Noble prize-winning economist. The book reflects on Indian culture, history, and identity. It gives us an opportunity to understand where Sen derives his notion of economics as a discipline which should be rooted in equality, fairness and entitlements. The 400-odd page of elegant prose that is accessible to the general reader paints India in particular, and Southasia in general, in broad strokes. While retaining an eye for the detail, never once does Sen miss the larger canvass. Unlike a single theme, Sen's anthology of essays brings out the heterodoxy of the mosaic called Subcontinent.

The first section, 'Voice and Heterodoxy', takes the reader on a moral and ethical tour of the beginnings of Southasian thought. Starting with an analysis of the Bhagvad Gita, the essential arguments between Krishna and Arjuna, Sen concludes that though Krishna's argument for action and duty captured the imagination of Isherwood and T S Eliot, it was Arjuna's profound doubt about pain and post-war desolation that has emerged of eternal value. The entire book operates on the one cardinal principle that a defeated argument that refuses to be obliterated remains alive. It is thus central for any system or society to remember Arjuna's consequential analysis and not to be just driven by Krishna's notion of "doing one's duty".