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Sen, Argumentative Indians and Bengali Modernity

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Sen, Argumentative Indians and Bengali Modernity space of enlightened liberalism, and the veneration in which he is held by educated Sen, Argumentative Indians Indians whose hunger for recognition and pain at India’s invisibility – in global sport- ing events, for example – are themselves and Bengali Modernity sociological phenomena that merit consid- erable study, it becomes all the more im- Considering the public profile of Amartya Sen, his domination of perative to subject Sen’s work and intellec- the public space of enlightened liberalism and the veneration in tual views to a rigorous examination. Alas, which he is held by educated Indians, it becomes all the more this documentary, which purports to imperative to subject his work and intellectual views to a rigorous “re-examine” Sen’s life, does no such thing. It is a particular debasement of the English examination. Alas, Suman Ghosh’s documentary film, Amartya language, and a sign of the lazy intellectual Sen: A Life Re-examined, does no such thing. culture of our times, that phenomena which have never been subjected to examination VINAY LAL the cultured, ecumenical, and humane voice in the first place are then put up for “re- of moderation, learning and awareness. It examination”. Past the initial montage of t has been reported that after Amartya would be difficult to charge Sen with excess adulatory comments from Sen’s peers and Sen won the Nobel Prize in economics of any kind: neither a nationalist nor an admirers, the documentary commences Iin 1998, parents in West Bengal began indigenist, Sen has also apparently not erred with Sen’s early years at Shantiniketan. to name their baby boys after him. Among on the side of unequivocally committing Lingering shots of Shantiniketan and the contemporary Indian intellectuals, he has himself to globalisation, unhampered liber- countryside around it set the pace for the a wider readership in the Anglophone world alisation, or free market fundamentalism. film, determine its mood and style, and than any of his peers; and though at least In this documentary, which is nominally furnish the intellectual motifs around which one other Indian economist, Jagdish shaped around a conversation between Sen one might frame a discussion of Sen’s Bhagwati, has often been mentioned as a and his former student, Kaushik Basu, now intellectual world. Sen found himself flour- possible Nobel laureate in economics, an economist of some renown at Cornell ishing in the air of freedom at the venerable among Indian economists Sen has a reach University, we hear Sen expressing more institution founded by Tagore: the students that is without comparison. One cannot than once an admiration for Adam Smith’s were not hampered by exams, and they think of many contemporary eminent eco- alleged humanism. Sen reminds us that were encouraged to look at the world nomists who write on politics, literature, Adam Smith, whose iconic status in laissez- outside – not just Europe, which too often and cinema with apparent ease, and one of faire economics is scarcely in doubt, also meant the world for colonised people, but his former students, Harvard history pro- championed state intervention to eliminate also China, Japan, Africa, and beyond. fessor Sugata Bose, assures the viewers of poverty, and was even an adherent of the Sen’s professor, Dhiresh Bhattacharya, Suman Ghosh’s documentary film1 that view that an economy is to be judged by how suggests that Sen outgrew Shantiniketan, Sen has also made invaluable contribu- good it is for the poor. Sen comes across and that Cambridge, where Sen earned a tions to the study of Indian history. Those as something of a critic of the World Bank second undergraduate degree and a doc- economists, such as the late John Kenneth and the IMF, describing these institutions, torate, allowed Sen to pursue new ap- Galbraith, who were viewed as departing which arose out of the Bretton Woods con- proaches, engage in a different style of from the extraordinarily rigid protocols of ference (1944), as “not very democratic”. thinking, and ask searching questions. the discipline, which has been singular Though Sen agrees that the economic Sen never looked back, moving from one both in its insistence that it is an exact and reforms of 1991, stewarded by Manmohan distinction to another. complete “science” and in its contemptuous Singh as the then finance minister, were repudiation of theoretical trajectories – long overdue, he argues that the govern- Sen’s Economics among them, poststructuralism, post- ment was not sufficiently attentive to the colonial theory, postmodernism, and femi- social dimensions of reform and to such Whatever searching questions Sen may nism – that have in some measure informed sectors of state intervention as social have asked, the film leaves the viewer no other social science disciplines, soon found welfare, health, education, and micro- more the wiser. Before around the mid- themselves ostracised by their fellow eco- credit. Yet, as Sen’s fellow Nobel laureate, 1990s, when Sen started assuming the nomists. In this respect, at least, Amartya Sen Paul Samuelson, reminds us, Sen has been mantle of the “Renaissance man”, his work may have the unique distinction of having “solidly in the mainstream of economics”. on famines would have been most widely retained a following in his own discipline Sen, Samuelson tellingly adds, was “ideo- known to educated people outside the while continuing to gain adherents among logically a little more to the left than Milton circle of professional economists, and his other intellectual and educated circles. Friedman when he got the Nobel prize or famous observation that famines do not Prominent as is his role as a public Friedrich [von] Hayek.” Lest anyone should take place in open societies with public intellectual, it can quite reasonably be construe this as irrefutable evidence of accountability had almost canonic status. argued that Amartya Sen, alongside his Sen’s propensity towards left wing politics, The film makes virtually no mention of friend Martha Nussbaum, has garnered a one might ponder whether it is possible to Sen’s large body of work on famines. There place for himself as one of the pre-eminent be to the right of Milton Friedman. is a relatively lengthy discussion of “social spokespersons for the liberal sensibility, Considering, then, the public profile of choice”, but the film assumes some know- and he appears in much of his writings as Amartya Sen, his domination of the public ledge, on the viewer’s part, of Kenneth 5222 Economic and Political Weekly December 23, 2006 Arrow’s “impossibility theorem”. (Sen’s “genuine mulitculturalism” and “plural discovery that reason is not the historical specific contribution consisted in attempt- monoculturalism”, but here as in much of achievement of the European enlighten- ing to delineate the specific conditions his humanist writings of the last 15 years ment alone. This is mentioned as though under which Arrow’s theorem might come there is little awareness of the politics of previously no one was aware of the ex- to pass.) Sen’s role in the formulation of knowledge. Much more interesting is the egetical traditions of Hinduism, the de- the Human Development Index receives problem of how American multiculturalism bates between Shankaracharya and the mention, and a very gentle criticism by his has become a template for the world, and the Buddhists, the hermeneutic traditions of fellow Nobel laureate, Kenneth Arrow, consequences of the imposition of official Indian Buddhism and the stunning intel- who expresses uncertainty about the equal multiculturalism upon people who, so to lectual feats of Nagarjuna, or the long weight given to life expectancy, literacy, speak, always practised multiculturalism history, of which Debiprasad and income, is permitted. Though the on the ground. It is Sen who, at the Lionel Chattopadhyaya has written a magiste- viewer is often reminded about Sen’s Trilling seminar on (what else) “India and rial account of materialist schools of thought interest in poverty, one would not know the West” at Columbia University in the in ancient India. from the footage in this film that poverty early 1990s, at which this reviewer was One doubts very much that, in his debates has any relationship to the deprivation and present, launched into something of a with Tagore, Gandhi was drawing upon suffering that people experience in real life. discussion on whether William Jones, the Enlightenment traditions of rationality, The West Bengal finance minister comes 18th century Orientalist who has been the just as it is doubtful that Tilak, for all his on towards the close of the film to assure subject of sustained intellectual inquiry, mastery of English common law and juris- the viewer that Sen’s ideas are in conver- was a good man or not. Sen, unsurprisingly, prudence, could have offered a vigorous gence with the work being done on the concluded that Jones was a “good man”. defence, which at places is reminiscent of ground by the government and NGOs to We might say that Suman Ghosh has Indian philosophical treatises, at his trials confront illiteracy and poverty, but this reached something of a similar conclusion in 1897 and 1908 without recourse to does little to disturb the atmosphere of about Sen, and so he ends up giving us a brahminical intellectual traditions. Sup- nobility, gentility, and civility which suf- hagiography rather than a critical exami- posing, however, that Sen has been parti- fuses the film and Sen’s life alike. The nation of Sen’s views. The author of the cularly attentive to India’s own rationalist horns blare, the Master of Trinity College, Argumentative Indian, one would have traditions, it becomes incumbent to ask appointed by royal warrant from her thought, deserves more. whether his work thus acquired a very majesty, is installed; the air comes alive different inflection.
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