Monday, March 30, 2009

The Argumentative Indian - Amartya Sen


The title is interesting enough to make people want to read the book. This book is about the importance of dilogue in India. The author talks about the arguments from the period of Mahabharata to current politics, arguments between genders; castes, arguments between sceptics, agnostics, atheists; between Hindus and Muslims. After 2-3 chapters it feels like the book is not about argumentative Indians but is about just one argumentative Indian and that is Amartya Sen, trying to prove some facts.
Suddenly out of nowhere he starts talking about Tagore and then keeps mentioning about some random Bengali people from writers to actors. It doesn't make any sense.

Amartya has succumbed to pompous diction and acute prolixity. He has used language that creates distance between him and the readers and the language does not feel natural. Lot of stories in the book are repeated lot many times. This book would have been far interesting if Amartya had chosen simple words and sentences rather than creating complicated sentence structures.

If you are of the types who take up something and then do not like to leave it until you finish even if it gets boring then you might want to read it till the end and PLEASE do so because it starts getting interesting in the end (in Part 4).

I just realized that from my reviews on books and movies even I am an Argumentative Indian!

1 comment:

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