The argumentative Indian : writings on Indian history, culture and identity / Amartya Sen.

India is a large and very diverse country with many distinct pursuits, vastly different convictions, widely divergent customs, and a veritable feast of viewpoints. This book brings together a selection of writings about his native country by the Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen. India is a country with many distinct traditions, widely divergent customs, vastly different convictions, and a veritable feast of viewpoints. In The Argumentative Indian, Amartya Sen draws on a lifetime study of his country's history and culture to suggest the ways we must understand India today in the light of its rich, long argumentative tradition. The millenia-old texts and interpretations of Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Muslim, agnostic, and atheistic Indian thought demonstrate, Sen reminds us, ancient and well-respected rules for conducting debates and disputations, and for appreciating not only the richness of India's diversity but its need for toleration. Though Westerners have often perceived India as a place of endless spirituality and unreasoning mysticism, he underlines its long tradition of skepticism and reasoning, not to mention its secular contributions to mathematics, astronomy, linguistics, medicine, and political economy. India is a large and very diverse country with many distinct pursuits, vastly different convictions, widely divergent customs, and a veritable feast of viewpoints. The Argumentative Indian brings together an illuminating selection of writings from Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen that outline the need to understand contemporary India in the light of its long argumentative tradition. --Penguin. In The Argumentative Indian, the Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen draws on a lifetime's study of his country's history and culture to suggest how we might understand India today in the light of its rich, long argumentative tradition. Though Westerners may sometimes perceive it as a place of endless spirituality and mysticism, India has a long-standing tradition of skepticism and reasoning, and its contributions to mathematics, astronomy, linguistics, medicine and economics are imperishable evidence of this. In sixteen linked essays, Sen discusses aspects of this intellectual and political heritage, including philosophies of governance from Kautilya's and Ashoka's in the fourth and third centuries B.C.E. to Akbar's in the 1590s; the continuing relevance of India's relations with China more than a millennium ago; its old and well-organized calendars; the films of Satyajit Ray; and the debates between Gandhi and the visionary poet Rabindranath Tagore about India's past, present and future.--BOOK JACKET.

English