India is a very religious country, it worships anything and everything except man. There are innumerable temples, churches and mosques. Gods are omnipresent. It is a corrupt country, but the God’s do not interfere in corruption, it is country of poverty but the Gods are seldom concerned. There is utter indiscipline in the public. It is country which hates the Muslims and other minorities. It is also a country which can kill if you carry beef. One can ask silently will Gods save India. Will the religions capable of saving India? Hindutva rules the country but it rules by divisive tactics of hating the other who may be a Muslim or a Christian. Religion is a vote canvassing platform. Caste and religion decide who should rule. Aldous Huxley almost a century back raised the question in his The Beneras, “To save the sun (which might, one feels, very safely be left to look after itself) a million of Hindus will assemble on the banks of the Ganges. How many, I wonder, would assemble to save India? An immense energy, which, if it could be turned into political channels [with transparent and honest commitments, added by the present author], might liberate and transform the country, is wasted in the name of imbecile superstitions. Religion is a luxury, which India in its present conditions cannot possibly afford. India will never be free until the Hindus and Moslims are as tepidly enthusiastic about their religion as we are about the Church of England. If I were an Indian millionaire, I would leave all my money for the endowment of an Atheist Mission.”
On the whole, Amartya Sen’s ‘The Argumentative Indian’ is one of the greatest contributions to our intellectual tradition. With his usual scientific scrutiny to deal with the contemporary chaos he asks questions:” Why contemporary people are so deceitful in the land of the Buddha, so immodest in the land of Ashoka, Kabir, Guru Nanak, Sri Chaitanya and Ramakrishna, so unlawful in the land of Chanakya, so greedy in the land of Harsha, so intolerant in the land of Akbar, so ignorant in the land of Tagore and Amartya, so violent in the land of Gandhi, so indisciplined in the land of Vivekananda, Netaji and Patel and so retrogressive in the land of Nehru, scientifically so backward in the land of Aryabhata……? India is becoming a communal country with fundamentalist ideology of caste and religion. India is returning to the past and in danger of repeating history. India is not going back to its heritage. This country with its rich variety was always argumentative as Amartya Sen argues. We refuse to be rational. In this country of gods what we urgently need is a God of reason and faith in human being. Both are not dear to the Hindutva devotees. India will never raise in the world of nations and world of humanity unless it travels the path human rationality and a humanism from its own heritage. Perhaps Tagore is our poet and prophet, he is the author of our national anthem and that of Bangladesh. He was not Gandhi. Tagore pressing for more room for reasoning, and for a less traditionalist view, a greater interest in the rest of the world, and more respect for science and for objectivity generally. Indians have to follow the God of Tagore, for his “God is not before thee! He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the path maker is breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered with dust.” His India is a country “Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; …” Where we do not glorify our tendency to ignore reason. Where “the charka does not require anyone to think; one simply turns the wheel of the antiquated invention endlessly, using the minimum of judgment and to assert that something is true or untrue in the absence of anyone to observe or perceive its truth, or to form a conception of what it is, appeared to Tagore to be deeply questionable stamina.” To assert that something is true or untrue in the absence of anyone to observe or perceive its truth, or to form a conception of what it is, appeared to Tagore to be deeply questionable. But Einstein said, “I agree with regard to this conception of beauty, but not with regard to truth.” Tagore’s response was: “Why not? Truth is realized through men.”