ArgumentativeIndian excerpt

From The Argumentative Indian by Amartya Sen

 Prolixity is not alien to us in India. We are able to talk at some length. Krishna Menon's record of the longest speech ever delivered at the United Nations (nine hours non-stop), established half a century ago (when Menon was leading the Indian delegation), has not been equalled by anyone from anywhere. Other peaks of loquaciousness have been scaled by other Indians. We do like to speak. This is not a new habit. The ancient Sanskrit epics the Rāmāyan̩a and the Mahābhārata, which are frequently compared with the Iliad and the Odyssey, are colossally longer than the works the modest Homer could manage. Indeed, the Mahābhārata alone is about seven times as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey put together. The Rāmāyan̩a and the Mahābhārata are certainly great epics: I recall with much joy how my own life was vastly enriched when I encountered them first as a restless youngster looking for intellectual stimulation as well as sheer entertainment. But they proceed from stories to stories woven around their principal tales, and are engagingly full of dialogues, dilemmas and alternative perspectives. And we encounter masses of arguments and counterarguments spread over incessant debates and disputations. - - -     In the Rāmāyan̩a, 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 tht 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 ('that there is no after-world, not 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.' 

© Amartya Sen