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REVIEW ARTICLE

The promise of reason

JOHN M. ALEXANDER

Speech serves to indicate not only what is useful

and what is harmful, but also what is just and what is

unjust.

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- Aristotle

Silence is a powerful enemy of social justice.

- Amartya Sen

SURPRISINGLY, both Amartya Sen and V.S.

Naipaul share nostalgia for a kind of "universal

civilisation" - an idea that recognises the value of

human life and spirit everywhere and at the same

time pays tribute to human individuality and cultural

diversity. This, they hope, would one day prevail

over regionalism, casteism, racism and sectarianism

in India and elsewhere in the world. And yet, when

reflecting on India's past and future, Sen and

Naipaul seem to depict contrasting images. Perhaps

it is possible to relate to both these contrasting and

yet undeniable portraits of India, and even begin to

wonder whether the contrast can ever be reconciled.

In The Argumentative Indian that brings together 16

essays on Indian history, culture and identity, Sen

highlights the long-standing argumentative tradition

of India and points out the importance of reviving it

in contemporary social and political life. The book is

an excellent interweaving of facts and values about

India, and could be of interest not only to Indians but

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to anyone who would be interested in a balanced

view of India. The anthology, instead of being a

random collection of disparate essays, provides a

rich variety of perspectives on a central theme: the

urgency of bringing back a culture of argumentation

in confronting problems in public affairs.

The use of arguments rather than physical force and

violence, the practice of dialogue and discussion

rather than a straightforward imposition of one's

views, Sen reminds us, have been integral parts of

Indian tradition and history: "prolixity is not alien to

us in India"; "we do like to speak"; "this is not a new

habit". Sen authenticates this by the fact that India

has been supportive of various religious

experiences: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism,

Islam, Christianity and others. Even more

importantly, Sen corroborates this with India's

intellectual pluralism: heterodoxies as different as

scepticism, agnosticism, atheism and materialism

have coexisted with mainstream religious and

philosophical schools of thought; dissenting opinions

and viewpoints were considered necessary

prerequisites to advancements in literature, science

and mathematics, already from the Vedic period;

many well-developed calendars have been in

practice for a long time in India's multicultural

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history.

What, then, happened to India's argumentative

heritage over the years? One possible reason, Sen

explains in Essay 7, is the preoccupation of the

"exoticist" and "magisterial" interpretations of India

by the West, particularly, during the colonial period

and thereafter. Rationality and argumentation were

projected to be something native and original only to

the West, whereas India's uniqueness was assumed

to consist in its `mystical' and `spiritual' traditions. Of

course, the mystical or spiritual in this context often

meant the absence or an insignificant presence of

intellectual legacy. This tendency seemed to have

dialectically affected Indian self-perception as well.

In their eagerness to stress what are uniquely their

`own' spiritual traits, Indians seemed to have not

only passively accepted a reductionist Western

imaging of Indian intellectual traditions, but have

also failed to keep alive a wide range of Indian

rationalistic trends in logic, epistemology,

psychology, linguistics, economics and political

science.

Along with these, Sen also finds the increasing

tendency to view Indian culture through the narrow

prism of Hindutva and the recent attempts to make a

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selective presentation of Indian history for justifying

anti-secular sentiments as deliberate efforts to

suppress the multiplicity of voices within a larger,

plural Indian identity. Such efforts, Sen decries, are

nothing but miniaturising "the broad idea of a large

India - proud of its heterodox past and its pluralist

present" and replacing it by "the stamp of a small

India, bundled around a drastically down-sized

version of Hinduism". If Tagore were to see the India

of today, Sen writes in Essay 5, he "would be

shocked by the growth of cultural separatism" and

"would have strongly resisted defining India in

specifically Hindu terms, rather than as a

`confluence' of many cultures". In the essay inspired

by Satyajit Ray, Sen finds in Ray a person who

celebrated the "dizzying contrasts" of cultures within

India and insisted on respecting their individuality.

A major part of Sen's anthology, particularly Essays

1-2 and 9-12, does contemplate on the different

ways of bringing back the practice of argumentation.

One preliminary way, Sen points out, is the

possibility for all to participate in fair and effective

electoral politics. But when ballots and elections are

also more broadly linked to a "public expression" of

values of justice, respect and human dignity, and

supported by a "wider participation" of the media,

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civil society groups and the general public in social

criticism, political protest and public agitation, they

can go a long way in sustaining and strengthening

democracy. "Silence", says Sen, "is a powerful

enemy of social justice."

Looking at India's past and present, there are a

number of reasons to be less enthusiastic and even

sceptical about Sen's proposal: Does argumentation

not run the danger of being co-opted by the rich and

the powerful? Do the well-educated and those who

can better articulate and persuade not have an edge

over others to manoeuvre the course of public

discussion? For many years now, social inequalities

based on caste, gender and community have been

legitimised and perpetuated by different religious,

anthropological and even genetic theories biased in

favour of the elite. Owing to democratic politics and

the rule of law, these inequalities can today be

contested. Yet, making use of these democratic

possibilities in order to create a less unequal society

still remains a far distant dream, particularly because

of the prevailing economic and educational

inequalities.

Despite all these contradictions and possible

setbacks, Sen's guiding principle is that

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argumentation can be an ally of the poor and

powerless in resisting hegemony. True, a more

action-oriented political protests and public

agitations to demand a particular right for the poor

will catch the public eye and politicise the issue at

hand. They will also compel political leaders and

motivate policy-makers to take the desired course of

action immediately. And yet when political activism is

not accompanied by public discussions and

intellectual resources, sooner or later, it runs the risk

of losing momentum, spirit and vigour. Indeed,

political activism and critical argumentation should

mutually support each other in order to evoke social

solidarity and to provide an effective political voice to

the poor.

IN India: A Million Mutinies Now (1990), the third

book in his non-fiction trilogy on India, Naipaul

captures a different feature of Indian life, different

from the one Sen wishes to revive. To Sen India

may appear to be a land of arguments and reason,

but to Naipaul it comes out as a land of resentments

and rage, although Naipaul would arrive at this

complex pronouncement by a complicated detour.

Furthermore, despite the fact that both Sen and

Naipaul commonly share a nostalgic sentiment for

the onset of universal civilisation, they seem to differ

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from each other in their accounts of how people

come to grasp universal values.

In his first account (1964), Naipaul called India "an

area of darkness", obscured in its poverty and

wretchedness, obliterated in its chaos and ruins,

mimicry and pathologies. In the second (1977), he

called it a "wounded civilisation", wounded by many

centuries of foreign rule, and which has not yet

found its own sense of purpose for transformation

and regeneration. Naipaul often uses words such as

"wounded", "fragmented" and "degenerated" for

societies that are stagnant and rootless.

His capacity to observe and his brilliance to

transform what he observes into words are, in the

third account, less mixed up with his temperament to

provoke and condemn. India then seemed to

Naipaul as if "swallowing its own tail", incapable of

ideology and renewal, unable to break with its past

crisis and failures. But now, it turns out to be a land

of revolutions, mutinies and rebellions.

Independence had come to India like a revolution;

now there were many revolutions within that

revolution. What was true of Bombay was true of

other parts of India as well: of the state of Andhra

Pradesh, of Tamil Nadu, Assam, the Punjab. All over

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India scores of particularities that had been frozen

by foreign rule, or by poverty or lack of opportunity

or abjectness had begun to flow again.

S. SUBRAMANIUM

Amartya Sen.

Naipaul reads the arrival of revolutions in the faces,

words and sentiments of Dalit leaders, Hindu and

Muslim extremists, regional politicians, Sikh

terrorists and naxalite rebels. He discerns that these

revolutions are not just passing events, but rather

they are here to stay. These have, in fact, taken hold

of the imagination of ordinary people, a wide cross-

section of society: clerks, housewives, film

producers, stockbrokers, journalists and holy men.

Also, Naipaul realises that the present revolutions

are so very different from the `proto-revolution' for

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independence. Freedom from the colonial rulers was

worked out more or less by the people at the top.

Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar and others were in the

limelight; people had to just follow. But the series of

`new revolutions' works its way from the bottom:

"people everywhere have ideas now of who they are

and what they owe themselves."

Notwithstanding all these positive signs of life,

Naipaul seems dispirited about what is going on.

Normally, revolution is a threshold for a new era;

social upheavals usher in a new social order.

Naipaul finds that the new revolutions do not have

this great stature. They look more like the failed

`Indian Mutiny' of 1857, with its terrible memories of

brutality, revenge and backlash. They are inhibited

by gossip and petty quarrels, and break up into

"particularities", "little wars", "revolutions within

revolution" and a "million mutinies". In a deliberate or

unintended move to blur reality and fiction, and

probably to say that his words and judgments in the

1990s prevail even now, Naipaul carries over his

dispiritedness to Magic Seeds (2004), where Willie

Chandran, the `half-hero' of Half a Life (2001), goes

on a revolutionary expedition to India only to find

that he has joined the "wrong revolution" and "fallen

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among the wrong people".

After many years of revolutionary campaigns and

imprisonment, he realises that the revolution "had

nothing to do with the village people" and "the poor

are treated as the poor always are".

The recent awakening to one's own claims and

entitlements, in Naipaul's perception, does not also

have finesse. Out of the great revolutions that

history has witnessed so far, emerged a larger idea

about the value and dignity of human beings in

general. But out of the present ones emerge

sectarianism and parochialism: Dalits, Hindus,

Muslims and others would have loyalties first to their

clan or faith; they would have no obligation towards

a "higher" or "general" idea about human solidarity

and brotherhood; the word "brethren" becomes

irony.

And finally, what characterises and sustains the

post-Independence uprisings, for Naipaul, are not

great "ideals" and well thought-out "strategies", but

feelings of anger, rage and resentments.

To awaken to history was to cease to live

instinctively. It was to begin to see oneself and one's

group the way the outside world saw one; and it was

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to know a kind of rage. India was now full of this

rage. There had been a general awakening. But

everyone awakened first to his own group or

community; every group thought itself unique in its

awakening; and every group sought to separate its

rage from the rage of other groups.

Naipaul discovers that feelings of resentment of

individuals against individuals, groups against

groups is not just a marginal phenomenon, but an

all-India, all-encompassing experience: Ambedkar, a

deified leader of Dalits whose photograph can be

found in every Dalit house, "had remained

embittered to the end"; "male ego is the most

hideous thing in our present society", ventilates a

feminist writer; "the local people were so full of

resentment against those Muslims that they had

clashes with them"; Shiv Sena, the army of Siva,

which wanted Maharashtra to be for Maharashtrians

targeted its anger towards poor migrants of South

India; "I should think that, like any other Indian, I had

no sense of ethical outrage in advocating killing for a

cause", justifies a naxalite rebel; and so on.

Yet, Naipaul is not altogether dispirited. He imputes

a pattern and meaning to the unrest and upheavals.

He realises that people are not forever doomed to

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be crippled by their clan loyalties and group

affiliations. Indeed, they begin to grasp the general

idea of human values.

Excess was now felt to be excess in India. What the

mutinies were also helping to define was the

strength of the general intellectual life, and the

wholeness and humanism of the values to which all

Indians now felt they could appeal. And - strange

irony - the mutinies were not to be wished away.

They were part of the beginning of a new way for

many millions, part of India's growth, part of its

restoration.

Naipaul seems optimistic, but his optimism is

carefully measured out in small doses. Ironically,

Naipaul's realisation of the dawn of humanism on

the surface of Indian life seems a `naturalistic'

reading. It is a growth out of "excess": "group

excess, sectarian excess, religious excess, regional

excess". The liberation from the narrow affiliations of

caste, creed or cult and the appeal to a broader

notion of human values arise not so much out of

reason and choice of individuals and groups, but out

of excess and mutinies. People have indulged

themselves in so much of violence and animosity,

have gone through so much of anxiety and strife,

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and have bottled up so much of resentment and

hatred, that they cannot go on any more. Now at last

they begin to realise how senseless and

shortsighted they have so far been.

IN narrative literature and social philosophy, there

are two different ways of viewing human

advancements. The first one, reminiscent in some

ways of the 17th century philosopher Hobbes' view

of society, suggests that societies, as it were,

progress towards the recognition of the values of

order, toleration, justice and respect out of an

inevitable necessity: periods of bloody and

prolonged war create a longing for peace and

agreements; too much of uncertainties and

fragmentation create nostalgia for stability and

wholeness; fear of anarchy and social chaos lead to

toleration and rules of justice. One does not have to

acknowledge, on this view, the role of moral

reasoning or sympathy in society's progress.

Perhaps Naipaul tries to infuse this moral scepticism

into his narratives. Without doubt, his narratives

about India are literary masterpieces. But his

invocation of the notion of excess in order to explain

the dawn of humanism and universal civilisation

leaves his narratives rather unbalanced. Moreover, a

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general assumption about the lack of moral

motivations and reasoned choices in individuals and

groups prior to the recognition of humanism of

values, and the idea that people arrive at the thought

of universal civilisation out of excess can make one

doubt whether Naipaul is telling the whole story

about India and her people.

Resentment is a complex and compound human

emotion. Perhaps it may not be as overt as anger,

but it can cause bouts of unmanageable violence

and rage. When argumentation is not mediated and

resolved amicably, it is likely to leave residuals of

resentments in the participants. There is first and

foremost a kind of resentment that arises due to

some misfortune or loss of self-respect suffered by

individuals and groups in society. But there is also

another kind of resentment that arises due to envy

or a lack of magnanimity at the success or prosperity

of others. Moreover, the degree of resentment can

indeed be constructed to an irresolvable intensity if

the victims - rightly or wrongly - are made to see that

their misfortune was deliberately intended by the

offender. Likewise, the intensity of resentment can

be severe when the success or prosperity of my

neighbour is perceived to be undeserved.

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Quite paradoxically, most individuals and groups of

Naipaul's narratives are presented as if carrying with

them extreme forms of resentment devoid of any

moral reasoning and sympathy. References to

stories, anecdotes and `subaltern' literature of how

individuals, groups and the nation as a whole

through democracy and argumentation, successfully

or unsuccessfully, work their way out of resentments

could have made Naipaul's narratives more

complete. Towards the very end of India: A Million

Mutinies Now, Naipaul does make a passing

reference to the "Indian state" as the "source of law,

civility and reasonableness". However, this is

somehow overshadowed by his overall

dispiritedness about the mutinies and their

protagonists, and by his preoccupation with the

notion of excess.

A SECOND plausible view of social progress is what

Sen seems to advocate and hope for. Not only does

Sen acknowledge fully the role of moral reasoning

and sympathy in human advancements, but he also

realises that dialogue, argumentation and public

deliberation are some of the surer ways of enriching

our moral imagination and universal convictions. In

The Argumentative Indian, Essay 13, Sen writes:

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The possibility of reasoning is a strong source of

hope and confidence in a world darkened by horrible

deeds. It is easy to understand why this is so. Even

when we find something immediately upsetting, or

annoying, we are free to question that response and

ask whether it is an appropriate reaction and

whether we should really be guided by it. We can

reason about the right way of perceiving and treating

other people, other cultures, other claims, and

examine different grounds for respect and tolerance.

RAJEEV BHATT

V.S. Naipaul.

Sen does not deny that individuals and societies

have their dark moments. Dialogue, toleration and

argumentation may have been India's valuable

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heritage. But these have always existed

concomitantly with bloody battles, communal killings,

caste based atrocities and violence against women.

Sen is also aware that often an unguarded reason

itself can be the cause of moral atrocities.

Nevertheless, Sen counts heavily on the capacity of

human beings to step back in order to reflect

critically and consider different course of actions.

The possible dangers of uncritical reasoning, argues

Sen, require not an endorsement of moral

scepticism, but rather a further critical scrutiny of

reason and a liberal encouragement of plurality of

voices.

Sen's plea for the revival of argumentative tradition

seems to make sense. In 1829, Raja Ram Mohan

Roy's anti-sati (widow burning) campaign

successfully led to a law against the practice of sati

and eventually paved the way for its disappearance

from social life. Even though Roy and many others

around him were convinced that sati was a morally

outrageous act, a wider support for the campaign

was hard to come by until Roy marshalled different

arguments and initiated a public discussion on the

issue. He had to base his case first and foremost on

a critical reading of the shastras (Hindu scriptures) in

order to argue that the justification of sati was sheer

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bad hermeneutics. Simultaneously, Roy also had to

convince the then British government that, even if it

meant an alleged interference in the religious affairs

of people, it had a moral duty to outlaw a practice

which was nothing short of murder. Above all, Roy

had to expose to the public the fact that what really

motivated sati was not religious commitment, but

rather the greed of widows' relatives to increase their

own share of inheritance and marital property.

Indeed, Roy's multi-pronged approach can continue

to inspire efforts to counteract many deeply-

embedded social evils.

Sen's eagerness to revive argumentation has

philosophical aspirations as well. In Politics, Book I,

Chapter 2, Aristotle assigns a political significance to

the capacity of human beings to speak and

communicate, and elevates this capacity to the very

condition of being human. Here, Aristotle, at first, is

amazed by the number of commonalities between

animals and humans especially by their social

nature. Keen, therefore, to suggest a trait that would

be typically human, he points out that it is the

capacity for "speech" (logos) that distinguishes

humans from non-human animals: animals have

only "voice" (phone) and use them to communicate

their feelings of pain and pleasure, whereas humans

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have speech and use them to express not only what

is useful and hurtful, but also what is just and unjust.

Argumentation, however, is a double-edged sword.

It can positively be used to resist hegemony and to

pave the way for a more equitable society. But it can

also be manipulated by the elite to work in their

favour. That is why when arguments are biased in

favour of the privileged and well-educated and when

the voices of the powerless are not listened to,

resentment may seem inevitable. Oddly enough,

Aristotle himself cannot be completely innocent of

certain forms of elitism. Although he pointed out that

being human fundamentally involves a public sphere

so that citizens can participate and interact with

fellow citizens through their speech and action, he

did not draw this insight within an egalitarian

framework. He seemed to have easily accepted the

idea of his time that certain sections of society like

slaves, labourers and women did not have the free

time and qualities required for a fuller participation in

political life. The revival of Indian argumentative

tradition, therefore, can shed light not only on the

inconsistencies in Aristotle's position, but also on the

contradictions in Indian social life.

References:

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Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian (London:

Allen Lane/Penguin, 2005), pages 432.

V.S. Naipaul, India: A Million Mutinies Now [1990]

(London: Vintage, 1998), pages 520.

V.S. Naipaul, India: A Wounded Civilization [1977]

(London: Picador, 2002), pages 161.

V.S. Naipaul, An Area of Darkness [1964] (London:

Picador, 2002), pages 290.

V.S. Naipaul, Magic Seeds (London: Picador, 2004),

pages 294.

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