rajaram has a go at amartya sen

aug 3rd, 2006

the emperor's new clothes.

rajaram certainly puts some body english into the review :-)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: N.S. Rajaram

    In the latest issue of The Quarterly Journal of the Mythic Society

 

Book review

 

WORLD ACCORDING TO AMARTYA SEN

 

A disappointing cut-and-paste job that recycles old opinions, wrong history and offers no new insights.

 

N.S. Rajaram

 

            The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity by Amartya Sen (2005). Allen Lane (Penguin U.K.). Pages: 409 + xx. Price £ 20 (HB).

 

            The Argumentative Indian belongs to a category of books that may be called celebrity production: it is not the content of the book that makes it important but who says it. Among such 'authors' in recent times may be counted scandal-ridden sports stars, fallen movie icons and 'dynastic' leaders rising to the top through accident of birth or marriage. These are rarely written by the putative author, and often not even read by him (or her). The book is important because the author happens to be important at least in some circles.

 

            Ever since he won the Nobel Prize, the Marxist economist Amartya Sen has been the oracle of the Left and especially of the Indian secularist establishment. He can now be quoted as 'proof" of how wrong the Hindutva people are on every count from the Harappan horse to Gandhi's secularism. It becomes unnecessary to find facts or present arguments: quoting the eminent author is proof enough.

 

            What about the book? In the author's words: "The book aims to be, at one level, an academic study done by a detached observer, but at another level I am caught in the domain of my subject matter." As it is impossible to judge the book on how effectively the author is "caught in the domain of his subject matter," the present review can only look at the claim of the book being an academic study done by a detached observer. Seen in this light, the book is neither academic nor detached. It is full of factual errors and assertions that are demonstrably false. Some are outright howlers.

 

            A serious reader is likely to be offended by the book's approach and even its tone. The condescension displayed towards the reader borders on contempt. Running through the book is a politico-social agenda of the Left. That is his prerogative. But it does not excuse factual errors and blatant misrepresentation. This is especially the case when it comes to history. Those with some knowledge of the subject will see it as presumptuous— of using celebrity to put forward shoddy scholarship.

 

            It is a curiously anachronistic book— its history is almost entirely a colonial byproduct, with a Marxist leavening. It is written for a Western audience, supposedly to correct the stereotypes about India, but these stereotypes no longer exist in the West. They are now the staple of the Indian secularists and a small intellectual clique in Western Indology circles and the media. These are the ones who will swallow this book with relish, though the author doesn't seem to think much of their intelligence.

 

            When we get to specifics, he repeats old discredited arguments, but with a shift in language. Aryan invasion theory is retained; Aryans become 'Sanskritic' but remain a chip of the Indo-European block and the Vedas and their language are of non-Indian origin. Dravidians become 'Non-Sanskritic.' Harappans become non-Sanskritic, though the word Dravidian is studiously avoided. This is subterfuge, not scholarship.

 

            This brings up the much-flogged Harappan horse and its supposed fabrication. His authority is the discredited Frontline article by Witzel and Farmer in the October 13, 2000 issue, without noting the responses that appeared in the same newsmagazine (not a scholarly publication) in a later issue (November 24), that thoroughly demolished their claim by producing additional evidence and also highlighting its irrelevance to the central issue of the Vedic-Harappan connection.

 

            Since Amartya Sen and amateurs like Steve Farmer (though not real scholars) continue to hold forth on the absence of the horse in Harappan remains (including Mohenjo-Daro), here is what John Marshall wrote in his Mohenjo-Daro and the Indus Civilization (Volume 2, page 654): "… the Mohenjo-daro horse, and the example of Equus Caballus of the Zoological Survey of India, are all of the type of the "Indian country-bred… " "

 

            The whole thing is a non-issue since the Rigveda describes the horse as having seventeen ribs. This is true of the native Indian variety and not the Central Asian, which has eighteen. Astonishingly, the author makes no mention of John Marshall's three-volume magnum opus on the Indus Valley (or the Harappan) civilization while enthusiastically embracing the likes of Steve Farmer. So much for the book being academic and detached.

 

Farmer's co-author Michael Witzel was so embarrassed when this howler was made public that he was forced into the preposterous 'explanation' that horse remains found by Marshall and other archaeologists were introduced later. How about the anatomical differences between the Indian horse and the Central Asian variety supposedly introduced by the invading Aryans? Easy. The number of ribs is not a genetically heritable trait. In other words, horses shed a rib when they enter India. This should give an idea of the historical worth of the book.

 

The book abounds in such howlers. According to Sen: "Mahatma Gandhi was staunchly secularist in politics" and insisted on "effective separation of the state and the religions." To maintain this fiction, there is no mention of his sponsorship of the Khilafat, let alone the horrors of the Moplah Rebillion that followed. It is no wonder that the word 'Jihad' is nowhere to be found. It cannot be blamed on Hindutva.

 

To maintain such demonstrably false positions, the author selects sources that fit his anti-Hindutva line regardless of their merit while ignoring those that fail to serve his purpose. Arundhati Roy is mentioned, while V.S. Naipaul is not. M.N. Srinivas, India's greatest sociologist, finds no mention while nonentities like Praful Bidwai are lauded. Meera Nanda who has been shown to be ignorant of works she was attacking (including this reviewer's), are cited while primary works like those by John Marshall, B.B. Datta and A. Seidenberg are nowhere to be found.

 

Faced with such tactics—they don't amount to a methodology—it is impossible to take seriously the author's claim: "…an academic study done by a detached observer." It is not even a polemic but an anti-Hindu tirade based on secondary sources and discredited assertions presented as methodology.

 

No less disappointing is the author's cultural insensitivity; it borders on the philistine. Like most of his ilk he knows no Sanskrit though by giving a list of diacritical marks he tries to give the opposite impression. His discourses on Indian culture draw heavily on Satyajit Ray's movies. There is no mention of Bharata's Natyashastra or Tyagaraja's music. His excursions into philosophy are at a similar level.

 

In summary, the book is essentially a cut-and-paste job put together from Left leaning sources including earlier lecture notes of the author himself. There are no insights or even any mention of exciting new developments like the Sarasvati River, population genetics or the impact of climate change— the fields in which we are seeing the most significant advances. It is an anachronism that might have made an impact had it appeared thirty years ago when little of this was known and the political climate was more congenial. But then Amartya Sen didn't have his Nobel. He now has a Nobel but world has passed him by.

__________

N.S. Rajaram is a historian.