The Argumentative Indian

by Amartya Sen

  In the Rāmāyaṇa, Jāvāli, a sceptical pundit, lectures Rama, the hero of the epic, on how he should behave, but in the process supplements his religious scepticism by an insistence that we must rely only on what we can observe and experience. His denunciation of religious practices (‘the injunctions about the worship of gods, sacrifice, gifts and penance have been laid down in the śāstras [scriptures] by clever people, just to rule over [other] people’) and his debunking of religious beliefs (‘there is no after-world, nor any religious practice for attaining that’) are fortified by the firm epistemological advice that Jāvāli gives Rama: ‘Follow what is within your experience and do not trouble yourself with what lies beyond the province of human experience.’43

  This observational focus is, of course, in line with the materialism of Lokāyata and the Cārvāka system. In fact, however, the Cārvāka system went further and suggested the need for methodological scrutiny of knowledge that is derived – directly or indirectly – from perception. We are told that perception is of two kinds: external and internal. Internal perception is obviously dubious because ‘you cannot establish that the mind has any power to act independently towards an external object, since all allow that it is dependent on external senses’.44 But we must be cautious, for a different reason, about relying also on external perception: it depends on how we use this perception. ‘Although it is possible that the actual contact of the sense and the object will produce the knowledge of the particular object’, often we shall have to rely on propositions that link and connect one object that we may fail to see to another that we can see (such as an unseen fire presumed on the basis of observed smoke). Indeed, there can be no direct observation of objects in the past or in the future, about which we may seek knowledge, and we then have to trace alleged connections over time.

  And yet the basis of this type of extension from direct observation remains, it is argued, problematic. While we may be tempted to rely on such connections, ‘there might arise a doubt as to the existence of the invariable connection in this particular case (as, for instance, in this particular smoke as implying fire)’.45 The use of inference is hard to make rigorous, since inference itself requires justification, and this may take us further and further back: ‘Nor can inference be the means of knowledge of the universal proposition, since in the case of this inference we should also require another inference to establish it, and so on, and hence would arise the fallacy of an ad infinitum retrogression.’46

  If the Lokāyata approach comes through as being intensely argumentative and very dedicated to raising methodological doubts (going well beyond merely disputing the basis of religious knowledge), that is probably a just conclusion. Indeed, Buddhaghoṣa, a Buddhist philosopher in fifth-century India, thought that even though Lokāyata can be literally interpreted as the discipline that bases knowledge only on ‘the material world’, it could perhaps be better described as the ‘discipline of arguments and disputes’.47 In this respect, the rationale of the Lokāyata approach is quite close to a methodological point that Francis Bacon would make with compelling clarity in 1605 in his treatise The Advancement of Learning. ‘The registering and proposing of doubts has a double use,’ Bacon said. One use is straightforward: it guards us ‘against errors’. The second use, Bacon argued, involved the role of doubts in initiating and furthering a process of enquiry, which has the effect of enriching our investigations. Issues that ‘would have been passed by lightly without intervention’, Bacon noted, end up being ‘attentively and carefully observed’ precisely because of the ‘intervention of doubts’.48

  If epistemological departures from orthodoxy provided methodological help for the cultivation of observational science, so did a catholicity of approach that allowed Indian mathematicians and scientists to learn about the works in these fields in Babylon, Greece and Rome, which were extensively used in Indian astronomy (particularly in the Siddhāntas) which preceded the flowering of Indian science and mathematics from the fifth century CE onwards. There has been a tendency in the new ‘nationalism’ of the Hindutva movement (discussed further in Essay 3) to deny the importance of global interactions going in different directions (in favour of what can be called ‘indigenous sufficiency’). But that reflects a basic misunderstanding of how science proceeds and why the borders of scientific knowledge are not drawn along geographical lines. As it happens, a great many departures in science and mathematics occurred in India from the early centuries of the first millennium which altered the state of knowledge in the world. The interactive openness of Indian work involved both give and take. Indian trigonometry and astronomy, in particular, are of special interest both because of their historical importance and because of the way in which they influenced (as is discussed in Essays 6 and 8) India’s relations with other civilizations, particularly the Arab world and China.

  In fact, Indian mathematics and astronomy had a particularly profound impact on Arab work (including Iranian work in Arabic) to both of which Arabs and Iranians gave generous acknowledgement. This applied to foundational departures in mathematics (particularly in the development and use of the decimal system and in trigonometry) and also to new ideas and measurements in astronomy. Indeed, the departures presented in Āryabhaṭa’s pioneering book, completed in 499 CE, not only generated extensive responses within India (starting with the works of Varāhamihira, Brahmagupta and Bhāskara), but they were also much discussed in their Arabic translations.

  In addition to the mathematical advances reflected in Āryabhaṭa’s work, the astronomical departures included, among a number of other contributions, the following:

  (1) an explanation of lunar and solar eclipses in terms respectively of the earth’s shadow on the moon and the moon’s obscuring of the sun, combined with methods of predicting the timing and duration of eclipses;

  (2) rejection of the standard view of an orbiting sun that went around the earth, in favour of the diurnal motion of the earth;

  (3) an identification of the force of gravity to explain why objects are not thrown out as the earth rotates; and

  (4) a proposal of the situational variability of the idea of ‘up’ and ‘down’ depending on where one is located on the globe, undermining the ‘high above’ status of heavenly objects (but directly in line with the philosophy of relying on what Jāvāli called ‘the province of human experience’).

  In addition to contributing to scientific understanding, these astronomical advances also involved sharp departures from the established religious orthodoxy. Āryabhaṭa’s insistence on working on these issues and on publicizing his findings involved considerable courage and determination.

  As Alberuni, the Iranian astronomer, wrote in the early eleventh century, not all of Āryabhaṭa’s disciples who followed his scientific lead and algorithmic methods were similarly courageous. Indeed, Brahmagupta, whom Alberuni judged to be the best mathematician of his time (Alberuni even produced a second Arabic translation of Brahmagupta’s Sanskrit treatise Brahmasiddhānta, having judged the earlier translation, made in the eighth century, to be rather imperfect), clearly lacked Āryabhaṭa’s fortitude and uprightness. Brahmagupta played up to religious orthodoxy by criticizing Āryabhaṭa for apostasy in rejecting the established theological astrology, even though Brahmagupta himself continued to use Āryabhaṭa’s scientific methods and procedures.

  In a remarkable eleventh-century rebuke, Alberuni noted the self-contradiction here, to wit that Brahmagupta, too, followed Āryabhaṭa’s scientific methods in predicting eclipses while spinelessly kowtowing to orthodoxy through bad-mouthing Āryabhaṭa:

  We shall not argue with him [Brahmagupta], but only whisper into his ear: … Why do you, after having spoken such [harsh] words [against Āryabhaṭa and his followers], then begin to calculate the diameter of the moon in order to explain the eclipsing of the sun, and the diameter of the shadow of the earth in order to explain its eclipsing the moon? Why do you compute both eclipses in agreement with the theory of those heretics
, and not according to the views of those with whom you think it is proper to agree?49

  In terms of mathematics and astronomical practice, Brahmagupta was indeed a great follower of the innovative Āryabhaṭa, and as good a mathematician as Āryabhaṭa (possibly even better), but Alberuni doubted that he could have been as fearless a pioneer as Āryabhaṭa clearly was. The constructive role of heterodoxy and of the courage to disagree is not any less pivotal in science than it is in the fostering of public reasoning and in constructing the roots of political democracy.

  The Importance of Arguments

  Before closing this essay, I should make clear what is and, no less important, what is not being claimed. There is, in particular, no proposal here to seek a single-factor explanation of India’s ‘past and present’ through an exclusive and separate focus on one particular feature out of a multitude that can be found in India’s constantly evolving traditions. 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, nor obviate the necessity of investigating the interactions of different influences.

  It also definitely does not encourage us to think of any social feature as an unchanging, perennial characteristic of an ‘eternal India’. India has undergone radical developments and changes over its long history which cannot be understood without bringing in a variety of factors, circumstances and causal connections that have had – and are continuing to have – their impact. The particular point of the focus on heterodoxy and loquaciousness is not so much to elevate the role of tradition in the development of India, but to seek a fuller reading of Indian traditions, which have interacted with other factors in the dynamism of Indian society and culture.

  Consider the relevance of ongoing traditions for the development of democracy – an issue that was briefly discussed earlier. In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela notes that as a young boy he learned about the importance of democracy from the practice of the local African meetings that were held in the regent’s house in Mqhekezweni:

  Everyone who wanted to speak did so. It was democracy in its purest form. There may have been a hierarchy of importance among the speakers, but everyone was heard, chief and subject, warrior and medicine man, shopkeeper and farmer, landowner and laborer…. The foundation of self-government was that all men were free to voice their opinions and equal in their value as citizens.50

  In arguing that his ‘long walk to freedom’ began at home, Mandela was not claiming that nothing else mattered in taking him towards the fight for democracy, nor that democracy would have no relevance to South Africa had its social heritage been different. The point is, rather, that the traditions Mandela saw at home were momentous, and they interacted with other significant factors that influenced him – and others – in South Africa. And since the democratic precursors in Africa had been fairly widely neglected in discussions on politics and colonial history, it was particularly important for Mandela to bring out the role of Africa’s historical traditions.51

  It is in this broad context that one can see the importance of the contributions made by India’s argumentative tradition to its intellectual and social history, and why they remain relevant today. Despite the complexity of the processes of social change, traditions have their own interactive influence, and it is necessary to avoid being imprisoned in formulaic interpretations that are constantly, but often uncritically, repeated in intellectual as well as political discussions on historical traditions. For example, seeing Indian traditions as overwhelmingly religious, or deeply anti-scientific, or exclusively hierarchical, or fundamentally unsceptical (to consider a set of diagnoses that have received some championing in cultural categorizations) involves significant oversimplification of India’s past and present. And in so far as traditions are important, these mischaracterizations tend to have a seriously diverting effect on the analysis of contemporary India as well as of its complex history. It is in that broad context that the corrective on which this essay concentrates comes particularly into its own. The claim is that the chosen focus here is useful and instructive, not that it is uniquely enlightening.

  It is in this broad context that it becomes particularly important to note that heterodoxy has been championed in many different ways throughout Indian history, and the argumentative tradition remains very much alive today. This tradition has received understanding and support from many of the modern leaders of India – not only political leaders such as Mohandas Gandhi, but also people in other walks of life, such as Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore, who was proud of the fact that his family background reflected ‘a confluence of three cultures, Hindu, Mohammedan and British’,52 emphasized the need to be vigilant in defence of this open-minded tradition and to help it to flower more fully.

  Like Akbar’s championing of rahi aql (the path of reason), Tagore emphasized the role of deliberation and reasoning as the foundation of a good society:

  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.53

  That task, momentous as it is, is made easier, I have argued, by the long history and consummate strength of our argumentative tradition, which we have reason to celebrate and to defend.

  I end on a positive (if somewhat light-hearted) note, by recollecting a nineteenth-century Bengali poem by Ram Mohun Roy which bears on the subject matter of this essay.* Roy explains what is really dreadful about death:

  Just consider how terrible the day of your death will be.

  Others will go on speaking, and you will not be able to argue back.

  We are told, in line with our loquacious culture, that the real hardship of death consists of the frustrating – very frustrating – inability to argue. There is, actually, an interesting vision behind this extraordinary diagnosis.

  2

  Inequality, Instability and Voice

  The tradition of heterodoxy has clear relevance for democracy and secularism in India, and may have helped Indian philosophy, mathematics and science, but there are also other issues with which we have reason to be concerned. Does it do anything much in resisting inequality and stratification, or in helping the unity of the country, or in making it easier to pursue regional peace?

  Recognition and Inequality

  I begin with inequality. India has a terrible record in social asymmetry, of which the caste system is only one reflection. This must be adequately recognized first, even when we resist the temptation to accept over-simple generalizations about an allegedly basic dichotomy between an instinctively even-handed West and a perennially hierarchical India (the stomping ground of what Louis Dumont has called ‘homo hierarchicus’).1 To acknowledge the long-standing presence of remarkable societal inequality in India, we do not have to endorse radical oversimplifications about cultural – not to mention genetic – predispositions towards asymmetry in India.

  But how does the tradition of heterodoxy and arguing touch on this aspect of Indian social life? I begin with heterodoxy and inclusiveness, and will take up later on the relevance of arguing. 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, with a right to follow their own beliefs and own customs (which may be very different from those of others). It is basically a right of ‘recognition’, to invoke a somewhat ambiguous idea with Hegelian heritage, which has received much discussion in contemporary social and cultural theory.2 Since the idea of recognition can be given different interpretations, and may sometimes suggest that all groups are taken to be equal in status and standing, it is important to clarify that something rather less than that is involved i
n what may be called ‘the equity of recognition’.

  Indeed, rather than sticking to the overused expression ‘recognition’, which can stand for many different things, I will use the Sanskrit word swīkriti, in the sense of ‘acceptance’, in particular the acknowledgement that the people involved are entitled to lead their own lives. The idea of swīkriti need not, of course, convey any affirmation of equality of the standing of one ‘accepted’ group compared with another.

  Acceptance, in this elementary sense, might not seem like much, but the political value of pluralism has much to do with acceptance – that indeed is the domain in which swīkriti delivers a lot. * If the inclusiveness of India made it easy for Christians, Jews, Parsees and other immigrants to settle in India to lead ‘their own lives’, coming from places where they had been persecuted, the principle that is involved in this ‘equity of toleration’ is one of acceptance – of swīkriti – rather than equality in any broader sense. This remains a substantial issue today, since the extremist parts of the Hindutva movement in contemporary Indian politics threaten – explicitly or by implication – precisely the swīkriti of non-Hindus, particularly Muslims.

  Swīkriti is thus a momentous issue, in its own right. But, separated from other objectives and priorities, it does little to guarantee – or advance – the cause of social equality or distributive justice. India’s record in these areas is indeed quite appalling.† And this remains so even after more than half a century of independence and the practice of democratic politics.* Inequalities related to class, caste or gender can continue vigorously without being trimmed in any way by recognition or swīkriti. If the norm of acceptance and of participation leads naturally, in the context of a contemporary society, to political equality within the broad structure of a democracy (that translation is easy enough), it does not in any automatic way extend that political symmetry into the promotion of social and economic equality.