Sen's tone is heartwarmingly celebratory in two essays, which talk about two figures who are exemplars of the heterodoxy that reflects the best of the Indian tradition. This is a 'capacious view of a broad and generous Hinduism, which contrasts sharply with the narrow and bellicose versions that are currently on offer, led particularly by parts of the Hindutva movement'. This view of Hinduism is mature enough and magnanimous enough to accommodate dissenting views and 'even profound scepticism'.
Illuminated with examples from the teachings and lives of emperors such as Akbar and Ashoka, with illustrations from the epics, The Ramayana and The Mahabharata, and a staggering range of other references, he propounds a view of Hinduism as an inclusive philosophy rather than an exclusionist, divisive religion. Sen refutes the facile Western description of India as a 'mainly Hindu country' with the same rigorous scholarship that he demolishes the isolationist, circumscribed view of Hindutva held dear by the Hindu right that ruled India between 19. While talking about Indian democracy, for instance, he cautions: 'It is important to avoid the twin pitfalls of 1) taking democracy to be just a gift of the Western world that India simply accepted when it became independent, and 2) assuming that there is something unique in Indian history that makes the country singularly suited to democracy.' The truth is far more complex and somewhere between these two views. Sen does not indulge in triumphalism about his country's past nor does he spare Western influences (like James Mill's History of British India) that have oversimplified and distorted the Indian reality. One of the book's many triumphs is its tone. Central to his notion of India, as the title suggests, is the long tradition of argument and public debate, of intellectual pluralism and generosity that informs India's history. In this superb collection of essays, Sen smashes quite a few stereotypes and places the idea of India and Indianness in its rightful, deserved context. There can, then, be few people better equipped than this Lamont University Professor at Harvard to write about India and the Indian identity, especially at a time when the stereotype of India as a land of exoticism and mysticism is being supplanted with the stereotype of India as the back office of the world.
One of the most influential public thinkers of our times is strongly rooted in the country in which he grew up he is deeply engaged with its concerns. In Santiniketan, the former Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, can be seen on a bicycle, friendly and unassuming, chatting with the locals and working for a trust he has set up with the money from his Nobel Prize. Every year, the 1998 winner of the Nobel Prize for economics returns to Santiniketan, the tiny university town 100-odd miles from Calcutta.
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