Here is a short excerpt: http://www.purao.net/wiki/Argumentati... ( )

When I started the book, I was really amazed at the different themes put together right from Ashoka to Akbar, Vedas to Mill’s history of India. After I finished the book, I was not any wiser than when I had read the first 100 pages. The repetition of ideas with the very same examples doesn’t make reading any easier or interesting. While he criticizes nationalism throughout his book, citing Ravindranath Tagore, he himself comes across as one. Again, his views on arguments fall flat when one reads the single-minded views of his from which it becomes very evident that instead of thinking a given issue through and then making an analyzed and rational statement; he is much more inclined to use his arguments to prove his point. He has used the opposite view in some cases, but only to substantiate his own points rather than as a value add to the book and all objections to his theory which he couldn’t have explained away even in this unilateral channel of communication, he has conveniently ignored. Having made all these points, I cannot deny that the book is very informative and the author has been successful in bringing up most of the points which should be discussed when one wants to understand, discuss or write about India, for this I would rate this book above average with a score of 3.5 on a scale of 5.

I personally had more respect for Amartya Sen before I read this book and one of the reasons I am so critical of this book go beyond the obvious fact that it is badly written. If the same book had been written as “My Own Views”, I would have been more tolerant, but what really tested my patience was his effort to disguise his pre-conceived notions as the best an intellectual and rational mind can come up with. While his book may appeal more to an ill-read and/or uninformed audience, it didn’t appeal to me. Somewhere down the line, he seems to have lost contact with India as it has grown in the last decade and a half and I don’t only refer to the economic progress, but the country as a whole and maybe that is why this poor effort.

Finally, if I wouldn’t have known, I could have never guessed that an economist and that too a Nobel laureate has written this book. ( )

Amartya Sen is a Nobel Prize-winning economist, and here he has chosen a collection of his essays to reflect on India’s argumentative tradition and the possible relevance of the tradition in multicultural discussions. Sen suggests there is great need for consideration of the “dialogic tradition and of the acceptance of heterodoxy (xiii)” related to: democracy, public reasoning, secularism, the intersection of various faith traditions, social inequities, and poverty.

Sen addresses such subjects as science and mathematics, India/China relationships, nuclear power, colonialism, gender identities, poverty and deprivation, the Indian Diaspora, ancient history and traditions, class, the Western imagination of India, possibilities in development of identity, and the limits of reason.

Information about the 'non-exotic' facets of Indian history and culture. Discussion of public health, inequalities... ( )

The Argumentative Indian by Amartya Sen, highlights India as more than just the home for effete mysticism that it has been portrayed to be in some western societies.

more @ http://toogood2read.blogspot.com/2007...