Best Quotes from The Argumentative Indian - Writings On Indian Culture, History And Identity by Amartya Sen with Page Numbers

Prolixity is not alien to us in India.

We do like to speak.

The debate occurs on the eve of the great war that is a central event in the Mahabharata.

Arjuna questions whether it is right to be concerned only with one's duty to promote a just cause and be indifferent to the misery and the slaughter.

Krishna insists on Arjuna's duty to fight, irrespective of his evaluation of the consequences.

There remains a powerful case for 'faring well', and not just 'forward'.

These arguments remain thoroughly relevant in the contemporary world.

Despite that compulsion to 'fare forward', there was reason also for reflecting on Arjuna's concerns.

There will be an opportunity in this essay... to examine the reach and significance of many of the debates and altercations that have figured prominently in the Indian argumentative tradition.

To recognize the importance of an argumentative heritage and of the history of heterodoxy does not in any way do away with the need to look at the impact of other influences.

The tradition of heterodoxy has clear relevance for democracy and secularism in India.

To acknowledge the long-standing presence of remarkable societal inequality in India, we do not have to endorse radical oversimplifications about cultural predispositions.

The inclusiveness of pluralist toleration in India has tended mainly to take the form of accepting different groups of persons as authentic members of the society.

The political value of pluralism has much to do with acceptance.

Inequalities related to class, caste or gender can continue vigorously without being trimmed in any way by recognition or swikriti.

On the 26th January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality.

The right to comprehensive participation in democratic politics can be the basis of social and political use of 'voice' - through arguments and agitations - to advance the cause of equality in different spheres of life.

Silence is a powerful enemy of social justice.

The demands of justice in India are also demands for more use of voice in the pursuit of equity.

The surest method for resolving conflicts, however slowly, is dialogue.

"No, in fact there is no case for having religious convictions until you are able to think seriously for yourself - it will come with time."

"The important thing about a man is his dharma, not necessarily his religion."

"Hinduism also points out that a difference of metaphysical doctrine need not prevent the development of an accepted basic code of conduct."

"There is a long tradition of tolerating doubts and disagreements within Hinduism, going back to the ancient Vedas, some three and a half thousand years ago."

"The elaborate presentation of alternative points of views draws attention to the plurality of perspectives and arguments."

"The history of India that we read in schools and memorize to pass examinations is the account of a horrible dream - a nightmare through which India has passed."

"The only possible idea of India is that of a nation greater than the sum of its parts."

"Despite the manifest presence of religions all across the country, there is a resilient undercurrent of conviction that religious beliefs...should be politically inconsequential."

"Through their attempts to encourage and exploit separatism, the Hindutva movement has entered into a confrontation with the idea of India itself."

"The broader understanding can certainly win. But the battle for the broad idea of India cannot be won unless those fighting for the larger conception know what they are fighting for."

The nature of the Indian identity is significant for those who live in India.

Even though the programme of identifying with a 'small India' is vigorously pushed, there is a 'large India' too, available to the diaspora as much as to Indians in India.

In that large tradition, there is indeed much to be proud of, including some ideas for which India gets far less credit than it could plausibly expect.

The importance of such recollections does not lie merely in the celebration of history, but also in understanding the continuing relevance of these early departures in theory and practice.

It is 'not only relevant for the understanding of the 'large India', but also important for appreciating the variations and freedoms that a broad Indian identity allows - indeed, celebrates.

India's religions and mystical thoughts did not threaten to undermine that imperial intellectual distance.

Public discussion - in addition to balloting and elections - is part of the very core of democratic arrangements.

Celebration of Indian civilization can go hand in hand with an affirmation of India's active role in the global world.

The openness of the argumentative tradition militates not only against exclusionary narrowness within the country, but also against the cultivated ignorance of the well-frog.

Whatever we understand and enjoy in human products instantly becomes ours, wherever they might have their origin.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; . . . Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; . . . Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds, and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live.

Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter; my refuge is humanity.

We who often glorify our tendency to ignore reason, installing in its place blind faith, valuing it as spiritual, are ever paying for its cost with the obscuration of our mind and destiny.

I have no sleep tonight. Ever and again I open my door and look out on the darkness, my friend! I can see nothing before me. I wonder where lies thy path!

The mastery over the machine [...] has been kept a sealed book, to which due access has been denied to this helpless country.

Let me feel with unalloyed gladness that all the great glories of man are mine.

Whatever we understand and enjoy in human products instantly becomes ours, wherever they might have their origin.

The worst form of bondage is the bondage of dejection, which keeps men hopelessly chained in loss of faith in themselves.

In my view the imposing tower of misery which today rests on the heart of India has its sole foundation in the absence of education.

Ray was always willing to enjoy and learn from ideas, art forms and lifestyles from anywhere - within India or abroad.

The individuality of cultures is a big subject nowadays, and the tendency towards homogenization of cultures... has been strongly challenged.

The possibility of communication is only one of them. There is the more basic issue of the individuality of each culture.

Ray did not take cross-cultural comprehension to be impossible; he saw the difficulties as challenges to be encountered.

There is no reason why we should not cash in on the foreigners' curiosity about the Orient. But this must not mean pandering to their love of the false-exotic.

Ray’s focus on local culture cannot be readily seen as an 'anti-modern' move. 'Our culture' can draw on 'their culture' as well.

Cultural influences are, of course, a two-way process, and India has borrowed from abroad, just as we have also given the world outside the benefits of our cooking traditions.

What should you put in your films? What can you leave out? The celebration of these differences - the 'dizzying contrasts' - is far from... the vigorous pleas to keep 'our culture' distinctly unique.

In our heterogeneity and in our openness lies our pride, not our disgrace.

Ray’s delicate portrayal of the varieties of people that make us what we are as a nation cannot be outmatched.

The self-images (or 'internal identities') of Indians have been much affected by colonialism over the past centuries.

The special characteristics of Western approaches to India have encouraged a disposition to focus particularly on the religious and spiritual elements in Indian culture.

Those who prefer to pursue a more 'indigenous' approach often opt for a characterization of Indian culture and society that is rather self-consciously 'distant' from Western traditions.

Focusing on India's 'specialness' misses, in important ways, crucial aspects of Indian culture and traditions.

The deep-seated heterogeneity of Indian traditions is neglected in these homogenized interpretations.

The magisterial approaches played quite a vigorous role in the running of the British Empire.

Not surprisingly, the magisterial approaches tended to blast the rationalist and humanist aspects of India with the greatest force.

The impact of the associated images survives, not least in the United States.

The need to preserve the distinctiveness of one's spiritual culture is much heightened when one acknowledges Western superiority in the material domain.

Indeed, despite the grave sobriety of Indian religious preoccupations, it would not be erroneous to say that India is a country of fun and games.

"Is there anyone in any part of India who does not admire China?" asked Yi Jing in the seventh century.

The intellectual links between China and India, stretching over much of the first millennium and beyond, were important in the history of the two countries.

There is a need for a broader understanding of the reach of these relations, which is important for a fuller appreciation not only of the history of a third of the world's population.

Even though Buddhism served as a critically important influence, the intellectual interactions between the two countries initiated by Buddhism were not confined to religion only.

...that attribution of a singular identity can miss out on much that is important.

This segregation has already done significant harm to the understanding of other parts of the global history of ideas.

Buddhism was not the only vehicle of Sino-Indian relations, which began almost certainly with trade.

Buddhist educational institutions... provided a good basis for overcoming that mistrust.

The broadening effects of Buddhist connections on the self-centeredness of both Chinese and Indian intellectuals are among the significant secular consequences of these linkages.

The need to study these relations is made even stronger by the way this rich history has tended to be ignored in the contemporary understanding of our global past.

We heard with rapt attention and we felt powerfully inspired.

The achievements of Indian democracy have been far from unblemished.

Democracy is not only a blessing in itself, but can also be the most important means to pursue public ends.

The removal of poverty, particularly of extreme poverty, calls for more participatory growth on a wide basis.

Political voice is extremely important for social equity.

Economic performance, social opportunity and political voice are deeply interrelated.

We must, however, distinguish between cases of good results brought about by strong political commitment and any expectation that authoritarian leadership would, in general, produce such results.

The possibilities of public agitation on issues of societal inequality and deprivation are now beginning to be more utilized than before.

It is not enough to continue to have systematic elections, to safeguard political liberties and civil rights, to guarantee free speech and an open media.

A more vigorous - and vocal - use of democratic participation can do much more in India than it has already achieved.

Nehru was particularly determined to remove the barriers of class stratification and their far-reaching effects on inequality and deprivation in economic, political and social spheres.

Nehru's vision was not fulfilled during his own lifetime... what is... more distressing is the slowness of our progress in the direction to which Jawaharlal Nehru so firmly pointed.

The battle against class divisions has very substantially weakened in India.

The integration of class in a consolidated understanding of injustice is of paramount importance.

Class is neither the only concern, nor an adequate proxy for other forms of inequality, and yet we do need class analysis to see the working and reach of other forms of inequality and differentiation.

The easiest to kill among the members of a targeted community are those of that group who have to go out unprotected to work.

The class dimension of sectarian violence tends to receive inadequate attention.

There is something serious to argue about here.

The ubiquitous role of class divisions influences social arrangements in remarkably diverse ways.

The recent initiative of the Indian government to help provide cooked midday meals in schools across the country is a very positive move.

Gender disparity is, in fact, not one affliction but a multitude of problems.

For while gender inequality has many faces, these are not independent... Rather, they speak to each other and sometimes strongly encourage one another.

Women are, in this broadened perspective, not passive recipients of welfare-enhancing help... but are active promoters and facilitators of social transformations.

Even the survival disadvantage of women compared with men in developing countries seems to decrease sharply as progress is made in these agency aspects.

It is important to see the concept of agency as stretching beyond immediate control over decisions.

What may make a real difference in dealing with this new - and 'high-tech' - face of gender disparity, is the... courage to reassess critically the dominance of received and entrenched norms.

Women’s power - economic independence as well as social emancipation - can have far-reaching effects on the forces and organizing principles that govern divisions within the family.

Active agency of women can... contribute substantially to the lives of all - men as well as women, children as well as adults.

Despite various achievements of Indian women, the need for a general recognition of this basic point remains strong.

Gender inequality is a far-reaching societal impairment, not merely a special deprivation of women.

The great epics - from the Iliad and Ramayana to the Kalevala and Nibelungenlied - provide thrilling accounts of the might of special weapons, which are not only powerful in themselves, but also greatly empower their possessors.

If 'in his eagerness for power', Tagore had argued in 1917, a nation 'multiplies his weapons at the cost of his soul, then it is he who is in much greater danger than his enemies'.

The 'soul' to which Tagore referred includes, as he explained, the need for humanity and understanding in international relations.

Moral resentment cannot justify a prudential blunder.

Despite all this, the principal argument against nuclearization is not ultimately an economic one. It is rather the increased insecurity of human lives that constitutes the biggest penalty of the subcontinental nuclear adventures.

No sensible decision-making can concentrate only on the probability of war without taking note of the size of the penalties of war should it occur.

The nuclearization of the subcontinental confrontations need not reduce the risk of war (either in theory or in practice), and it escalates the penalty of war in a dramatic way.

Strengthening of Pakistan's stability and enhancement of its well-being has prudential importance for India, in addition to its obvious ethical significance.

To demand that the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty be redefined to include a dated programme of denuclearization may well be among the discussable alternatives.

The moral folly in these policies is substantial, but what is also clear and decisive is the prudential mistake that has been committed.

"No man should be interfered with on account of religion, and anyone is to be allowed to go over to a religion that pleases him."

"The pursuit of reason rather than reliance on tradition is the way to address difficult social problems."

"To dispute the validity of reason, we have to give reasons."

"The importance of instinctive psychology and sympathetic response should be adequately recognized."

"Hope for the future lies in cultivating responses of respect and sympathy towards others."

"Reason and scrutiny serve as a reminder that cultural boundaries are not as limiting as is sometimes alleged."

"Evil behaviour can arise from a lack of understanding of - and familiarity with - other people."

"We must not reject a thing that has been adopted by people of the world, merely because we cannot find it in our books; or how shall we progress?"

"Reason has its reach - compromised neither by the importance of instinctive psychology nor by the presence of cultural diversity in the world."

"We need to transcend the marshy land of unquestioned tradition and unreflected response."

Describing Indian secularism as fundamentally robust would serve not to hide its problems, but to address them.

It is useful for secularists to face these issues explicitly - to scrutinize and re-examine habitually accepted priorities.

The requirement of symmetric treatment leaves open the question as to what form that symmetry should take.

Secularism demands symmetric treatment of different religious communities in politics and in the affairs of the state.

The importance of religious identity has to be separated from its relevance in the political context.

The notion of secularism in India reflects the recognition of extensive religious pluralism.

A pervasive plurality of religious beliefs and traditions characterizes Hinduism as a religion.

India's cultural inheritance combines Islamic influences with Hindu and other traditions.

In a diverse society, the entitlement to equal political and legal treatment must be preserved for all communities.

The political abandonment of secularism would make India far more wintry than it currently is.

"The calendar is an indispensable requisite of modern civilized life."

"The study of calendars and their history, usage and social associations can provide a fruitful understanding of important aspects of a country and its cultures."

"The nature, form and usage of calendars in a particular society can teach us a great deal about its politics, culture and religion as well as its science and mathematics."

"The multiplicity of calendars within a country... has tended to relate to the disparate preoccupations of different groups that coexist in a country."

"The immense variety of systematic calendars in India brings out an important aspect of the country, in particular its cultural and regional variation."

"The tradition of multiculturalism in India is particularly worth recollecting... when India's secularism is being sporadically challenged by new forces of intolerance."

"What do the calendars reveal? They reveal, in fact, a great deal more than just the months and the years."

"Akbar's championing of religious tolerance... is rightly seen as providing one of the major building blocks of Indian secularism."

"The motivations behind the attempts at calendar synthesis remain very relevant today."

"Caught as we are in conflicting attempts to interpret Indian civilization and society, the calendrical perspective offers... some insights that are relevant and forceful."

The interests of Manchester at which foolish people sneer, are the interests not only of the great and intelligent population engaged directly in the trade in cotton but of millions of Englishmen.

Jamsetji understood 'the full significance of the industrial revolution in the West and its potentialities for his own country'.

To want to do something in the interests of a country is not the same thing as wanting the country to be distanced from the rest of the world.

Identity is thus a quintessentially plural concept, with varying relevance of different identities in distinct contexts.

We need not live within history, and our reasoning about priorities in dealing with competing conceptions of Indian identity need not be parasitic on history.

The Indian identity could not favour any particular group over others within India.

The idea of India militates 'against the intense consciousness of the separateness of one's own people from others'.

The presence of budget constraints does not imply that there is no choice to be made, only that the choice has to be made within the budget.

The inclusionary view of Indian identity... can hardly be a federation of the different religious communities in India.

That expression of pride... is not the pride of a Parsee who happened to be an Indian, but of an Indian who happened to be a Parsee.