Books Corner

The new book of Prof. Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian (2005) is a wonderful book on Indian history and culture. Prof Amartya Sen is the Nobel Prize winner in 1998 “for his contributions to welfare economics".

I first saw a program in NDTV entitled, "India Questions Amartya Sen", anchored by Prenob Roy. The anchor displayed Prof. Sen's new book during the programme. I was not curious to buy the book at that time. Somehow, I bought the book and I should tell you, it is really a great book. I never expected that Prof. Sen, who was Indian born, lived in England for a long period of time, would have such a deep knowledge about Indian history to write a book of this caliber.

The Argumentative Indian is a collection of many essays of Prof. Sen, published in various magazines. In this book, Prof. Sen focuses on many aspects of Indians argumentative tradition. Not only does this book deals with the argumentative nature of Indians but also variuos current affairs of Indian argumentative topics.

Some of the notable topics are;

The Argumentative Indian; He took evidences from the past, to prove that, Indians have a traditional background of argumentative nature not as a negative but as a positive nature.

Tagore and His India; Prof Sen was born at Santiniketan, and a student of the University established by the poet Rabindranath Tagore. He has a very good knowledge on Tagore's life. In this topic, he explains in detail the special relationship between Tagore and his contemporary Mahatma Gandhi, their views on various topics and the drawbacks between them.

China and India; This topic displays his deep knowledge on Indian history. Here Prof. Sen explains how Buddhism migrated into ancient India. The history of Indo-China Relationship. Chinese contact with Nalanda University.

Tryst with Destiny; Jawaharlal Nehru's speech given on 15-Aug-1947, focusing on the world and the Indian situation.

India and the Bomb; You heard it right! An article on Indo-Pak Nuclear issues.

In addition, many more articles, which are very interesting and informative.

Reviews:

"India, going back for generations, has offered us masterful political, philosophic and economic commentary. That grace endures, and Amartya Sen is now its leading contributor. Nothing, whether from India or from the world at large, could surpass the essays in The Argumentative Indian. As will many others, I endorse this book for all." --John Kenneth Galbraith

"Mr. Sen's interests...extend far beyond the work that won him the Nobel...The 16 chapters range from an appreciation of Rabindranath Tagore, a great poet of Mr. Sen's native Bengal, to an examination of the historic intellectual links between India and China, to a discussion of India's wealth of sophisticated calendars... Mr. Sen shows that the argumentative gene is not just a part of India's make-up that cannot be wished away. It is an essential part of its survival – and an advantage."--The Economist

"Sen is unquestionably one of the most distinguished minds of our time . . . Yet while the pieces here are, as one would expect, enjoyably erudite and full of intriguing insights, they are not written in academies...Instead, the book is formed from a series of elegantly written historical and philosophical essays which cohere to form a single argument: that the sheer diversity of views and faiths and competing ideas that have always coexisted in India has naturally led to a fecund and tolerant argumentative tradition.
… Profound and stimulating . . . erudite and sophisticated . . . engaging and thought-provoking. The product of such a great mind at the peak of its power, it is one of the most stimulating books about India to be written for years, and it deserves the widest possible readership." --William Dalrymple, The Sunday Times (London)

"EP Thompson once wrote that since 'all the convergent influences of the world'...run through India, 'there is not a thought that is being thought in the west or east that is not active in some Indian mind'...It is certainly rare to see them as elegantly synthesised as they are in the cosmopolitan mind of Amartya Sen...His prose is benignly professorial, always measured, and occasionally rises to dry irony...He wants to see how the argumentative tradition in India can be deployed against 'societal inequity and asymmetry' and what actual use can be 'made of the opportunities of democratic articulation and of political engagement'...'Silence is a powerful enemy of social justice,' Sen writes."--Pankaj Mishra, The Guardian

I wish every one to read this wonderful and informative book. I appreciate, if you buy and read the original version of the book, rather than second hand books or pirated versions, so that you are recognizing the author’s real hard work and effort gone into making of this great book.

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Indian Writing Novels Writing India Indian Author

Rasipuram Krishnaswamy Narayan
(October 10, 1906 - May 13, 2001)

"I'd be quite happy if no more is claimed from me than being just a story-teller. Only the story matters, that is all. If readers read more significance into my stories than was meant originally, then that's the reader's understanding of things. But if a story is in tune completely with the truth of life, truth as I perceive it, then it will be automatically significant."

Among many of Indian writers in English, R.K. Narayan has a special place in Indian history. As a novelist, he maintained India's essence in all his works rather than adopting traditional western style.

Similar to Thomas Hardy's Wessex, Narayan adopted his own way of creating his own fictional town called Malgudi, imitating typical south Indian city, His short story collection Malgudi Days took place in this exciting city of Malgudi. Some of his other novels too were written having Malgudi in mind.

He also travelled to United States in 1956 at the invitation of the Rockefeller Foundation. He began his career with writing short stories which were appeared mostly in The Hindu and also worked for some time as the Mysore correspondent for Justice, a Madras-based newspaper. His first work Swami and Friends was delayed for lack of publishing support.Graham Greene, through his mutual friend,was so much moved by Narayan's new work and he supported it for publishing. After this novel, a stream of novels based on Malgudi flourished.

His characters are like Charles Dickens model, imitate real world character's mind set, typical South Indian characters. This makes his novels loved my Indians. Later his novels became popular world wide.

He wrote his own life history: autobiography, he named it as My Days. A memoir, is an autobiography of R.K. Narayan. My Days is a beautifully compiled book that would otherwise seem like any other of Narayan's novels, until one realises that it's an actual narration of his life and his childhood.

The Guide : This novel made him so famous and popular.It was picturized in Hindi and later in other language. The book which begins as a comic look at the life of a rogue, but evolves into something quite different towards the end. This is also Narayan's Malgudi Novel. Novel starts with the hero Raju narrating his story.

I never knew R.K.Narayan, until my graduation, where my Professor introduced him to me as an Indian writer of English. I started reading his work like, Swami and Friends, Malgudi Days , My Days, The Dark Room, The Vendor of Sweets and Waiting for the Mahatma . Really it shows a new dimension to Indian writing in English. We read many novels of western style where we come across western names for all characters and places etc.Normally we never see our own city names in English novels.

In 1980, R. K. Narayan was awarded the A.C. Benson award by the Royal Society of Literature and was made an Honorary Member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1989 he was made a member of the Rajya Sabha (the non-elective House of Parliament in India). He received the Sahitya Akademi Award for The Guide (1958).

Interview

R. K. Narayan describes his conception of Malgudi

"Malgudi was an earth-shaking discovery for me, because I had no mind for facts and things like that, which would be necessary in writing about Lalgudi or any real place. I first pictured not my town but just the railway station, which was a small platform with a banyan tree, a station master, and two trains a day, one coming and one going. On Vijayadasami I sat down and wrote the first sentence about my town: The train had just arrived in Malgudi Station.''

'The World of Malgudi' by A. Hariprasanna:

"Various critics have attempted to identify the original of this mythical town. Iyengar speculates that it might be Lalgudi on the River Cauvery or Yadavagiri in Mydore. Others of the opinion that Narayan's Malgudi is Coimbatore which has many of the landmarks - a river on one side, forests on the other, the Mission School and College, and all the extensions mentioned in the novels. However, one is not likely to arrive at any definite answer as to its geographical locations, even if one shifts all the references to the town in the novels, such specific allusions as that "Malgudi is almost a day's journey from Madras." The simple reason is that Narayan has not drawn any map of framework for his Malgudi as Faulkner for example, did for his Yoknapatawpha or Hardy had in mind for his Wessex novels. ... But all efforts to identify Malgudi have remained futile, for it a pure country of the mind. ...

Narayan in an interview discusses some of the reasons why Malgudi had to be a South Indian town:

"I must be absolutely certain about the psychology of the character I am writing about, and I must be equally sure of the background. I know the Tamil and Kannada speaking people most. I know their background. I know how their minds work and almost as if it is happening to me, I know exactly what will happen to them in certain circumstances. And I know how they will react.''

Narayan's younger brother R.K.Laxman is also a very famous cartoonist and humorist.

I fondly hope, all of you to read his work.



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Indian Writing Novels Writing India Indian Author

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