Page 62 - EW FEB 2022

Books

Refreshing HOME IN THE WORLD: A India suffered authoritari-
anism, press censorship,
honesty & MEMOIR surveillance, punishment
Amartya Sen
of any form of native activ-
erudition ALLEN LANE ism and deliberate official
Rs.899 encouragement of eco-
Pages 464 nomic stagnation.
OBEL ECO- Relocation to Calcutta
NOMICS laure- for his undergraduate
Nate (1998), and studies in Presidency Col-
quintessential argumenta- ies which became founda- Sen draws on his lege reinforced the value of
tive Indian, Amartya Sen tional for his later research early intellectual lessons Sen learnt outside
comes across as a true in social choice theory and discoveries which textbooks which consti-
citizen of the world in his decisional analysis. The became foundational tutes a major proportion
newly penned memoir. eclecticism and plurality of for later research in of his recollections. The
Traversing continents, he Sen’s training nurtured a social choice theory & second city of the empire
is as much at home in Har- weltanschauung that was decisional analysis continued to intrigue and
vard, Berkeley, Stanford, humanitarian, compas- attract him as paradoxi-
Trinity College Cambridge, sionate, unprejudiced, cally it was the epicentre
as in New Delhi and Kol- gender sensitive and just. people of their freedom. of the Bengal renaissance.
kata — places where he has Recollecting the three Victims of communal The intellectual vitality
held prestigious research decades over which Sen violence were mainly the and cultural ferment where
and teaching positions. ruminates in this memoir, poor and dispossessed. modernity and ethnicity
Sen’s memoir recollects he looks before and after. In Identity and Violence: were radically, even dialec-
his early childhood in Part Two reinforces The Illusion of Destiny tically poised, gave the city
colonial Bengal, memories three extreme tensions (2006), Sen recounts how its dynamic character. The
of his ancestral home in of the early 1940s — the he probed the dangers of vibrant socio-cultural mi-
Dhaka, his grandparents’ World War drawing viewing people in terms of lieu of post-independence
home and later ‘Pratichi’ in closer to eastern India, a single identity. Calcutta in the 1950s is
Santiniketan, and a tempo- the escalating politically That train of thought portrayed authentically
rary home in picturesque engineered Hindu-Muslim was seeded decades earlier with its theatres, cinema
Mandalay, Burma. divide in the subcontinent, when he witnessed Kader halls and museums, its
Journeys to and from and the horrors and hu- Mia’s tragic death. This refugees and intellectuals.
these varied locations were man toll of the Bengal fam- capability to absorb experi- The grand city beckoned
an initiation into a concept ine in 1943. The scenes he ences and conversations with its books and people,
of belonging rather than encountered as a sensitive and transform them into its streets, sights and
displacement, an idea of boy, the prevailing milieu theoretical formulations sounds.
‘inclusiveness’ that re- with its complex politics is Sen’s unique gift. His Sen nostalgically
mained with him through and pervasive poverty, observations on the history remembers his classmates
his later travels across shaped his consciousness. of multicultural integration and teachers, hours spent
continents, as he encoun- This was the stimulus in Bengal negates the later in coffee house addas —
tered diverse cultures and for his research on fam- ‘clash of civilisations’ the- free-wheeling conversa-
environments, people ines, questions of supply sis formulated by Samuel tions, animated debates
and places, reinforcing and demand, rural poverty Huntington. and intellectual progres-
his perspective of a global and inflation, and welfare The irony of grow- sion that initiated him into
civilisation. economics in general. ing up under British rule the nuances of socialism,
A memoir is more than Sen’s family was uprooted made Sen aware of the Soviet Communism, and
a mere autobiography as from Dhaka in the midst of dichotomy between what Marxist ideology. At Presi-
it captures and explores escalating communal riots. Britain practiced back dency College, Sen delved
tangible and intangible The death of Kader Mia, home and the iniquity of deep into Marxian thought
experiences — strands who chanced to come to colonial administration in and interpretations, read-
of thinking, reflections, them for help after being India. Even as multi-party ings and misreadings,
events, dilemmas. In this stabbed, brought home the democracy and freedom identifying sources of
narrative, Sen draws on his reality of economics, class of the press prevailed in alternative economics and
early intellectual discover- and poverty that robbed the home country, British critiquing the application

62 EDUCATIONWORLD FEBRUARY 2022