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The Rediff Special/ Amartya Sen

Nothing is as simple as attaching the label of 'Westernisation'

Rationality, Mysticism and Heterogeneity

I come now to the third issue related to the diagnosis of a specific distinction between 'Western' and 'Indian' traditions of thinking and rationality. The point is often made that Indian culture in particular has been much more deeply religious and mystical than are the western traditions. It is certainly true that there is an astonishingly large volume of religious literature in India. But there is also a larger volume of atheistic or agnostic writings in Sanskrit and Pali than in any other classical tradition -- Greek or Latin or Hebrew or Arabic. This applies not only to the Carvaka and Lokayata schools (and their descendants), but also to Buddhism, the only agonistic world religion ever to emerge.

Even as late as the fourteenth century, Madhavacarya's book Sarvadarshanasamgraha ('The collection of all philosophies') devoted the entire first chapter to arguments in favour of the atheistic position. If these arguments were presented as part of a 'Western' challenge to Indian religiosity, no doubt an Indian particularist would see it as vindication of the gulf between Western and Indian modes of thinking, but as it happens the atheistic arguments came, in this case, in a book written by a fourteenth-century Vaishnavite scholar.

Similarly, if we take the Ramayana, the great epic which some see as a holy book on the life of divine Rama, it may appear terribly 'Western' to suggest that Rama should have been advised by someone not to abdicate his kingship, as he did towards the beginning of the epic, for reasons that can be seen basically as religious piety. However, this would be no 'Western criticism,' since this is exactly what the worldly-wise pundit called Javali tells Rama in the Ramayana itself: 'O Rama, be wise, there exists no world but this, that is certain! Enjoy that which is present and cast behind thee that which is unpleasant.' Heterodoxy runs throughout the early Indian documents, and a customs officer looking for contraband 'western' material would find plenty to confiscate there.

Many of the generalisations about Western rationality and its deep difference with Indian and other non-Western traditions are not worth the paper on which they are written. Each major culture tends to have very considerable heterogeneity within itself, and this applies to Western as well as Indian traditions.

The West itself is, of course, deeply diverse on the subject of nature and the supernatural. One has only to open the television in America in the evenings to see how many tales involving supernatural forces are being dished out to credulous viewers. In this context, it is also worth recollecting, what I mentioned earlier in this talk in describing the end of last millennium, that as 1000 AD approached, much of Europe was seized by a panic that the world must end then and the much-feared 'Last Judgment' would presently occur. The 'millennium panic,' as it was sometimes called, had connections with the idea that Jesus Christ would appear a thousands years prior to the so-called Last Judgment. This idea, called 'milleniarinism'' still survives among some sects of Christianity (for example, among Adventists).

Compared with the European panic, the arrival of the year 1000 in the Shaka calendar or in the Hejira had an air of quiet normality in India. This is not to argue that Europe is more attuned to the supernatural than India, but only to note that had there been a millennium panic in India related to the Shaka or the Hejira and none in Europe in the year 1000 AD (that is the opposite of what actually happened), the guardians of the west-non-west distinction would have undoubtedly offered this as a telling example of the contrast between Western rationality and Indian beliefs in the supernatural.

I am not denying that the balance of different attitudes may well differ between distinct cultural traditions, but some of the generalisations that are made to present west-non-west distinctions are hard to sustain. There are enormous varieties within each culture, and also changes over time. To see the contrasts in terms of frozen generalisations about the east and west -- each homogeneous on its own and sharply different from the other -- would be a very great mistake.

Nothing is as simple as attaching the label of 'Westernisation' when some people in a non-Western society criticise some on-going custom, but these criticisms may arise just as easily from local heterodoxy as from any grand preference for Westernising a non-Western society. Buddha or Carvaka -- or Javali -- are as Indian as are Rama or Krishna.

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Amartya Sen, continued

Amartya Sen, the world renowned economist, delivered this UNESCO lecture in Delhi recently.

The Rediff Specials

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