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This would provide the context.
Martin wrote on 16th Oct 2014:
There is in fact a brilliant line of argument in this article. The question is: Do Sen's thoughtful and soft-spoken ideas and thoughts still find a wider audience in today's India? While I was reading it that much-noticed dispute between Professor Bhagwati and Amartya Sen two years ago about his new book came to my mind again. The way that Bhagwati personally attacked Sen at that time was somewhat irritating to me. And now --- two years later --- it's all about Modi and the so-called Gujarat model of development. And even bright persons like Bhagwati seem to be totally gung-ho about it.
But I agree with you: This should definitely be a starting point for our work.
To which, Kushagra wrote on 16th Oct 2014:
I think the time we live in today (at least in large parts of the world) is not one for finding acceptance of noble and refined thinking. In fact, in human history there have been very exceptional periods where such thinking has flourished, so in that sense, today is no different from yesterday.
Having said that the question is: should that be a reason to not pursue such thinking and feeling? The consensus, at least today, would be that whatever yields immediate material results is what is worth pursuing and that would include fame, acceptance and convenience of making your point understood. In that sense, Sen and all the substantive philosophers of the past would be completely out of date. Even if they are studied, they may be studied with a certain perversion like what partly happened to Nietzsche or, for that matter, to Adam Smith.
To come back to the question: is difficulty in being heard a reason to limit one's own personal pursuit and incorporation of more refined and truthful ideas? A good example that advises against this can be found in one historical process: With the rise of the Roman Empire alongside the rise of the institution of Church, there was a lot of burning at the stake of the cultural and intellectual heritage of the 'pagans'. During that process in the early part of the A.D. a lot of the texts of literature, philosophy as well as the learning was actually 'smuggled' to Ireland due to a material exodus of the pagan intelligenstia. This was the same literature that was re-discovered during the Medieval and more fully during the post-scholastic age. The amount of reverence shown to Aristotle for a long time in Western philosophy was on account of that 're-discovery'. It significantly shaped both the theological and political formation of Europe. It would be difficult to imagin a 1500 year old literature coming to influence events so far down the line simply because of the efforts of 'preservation' and 'continuation'.
The history of Buddhism in India is very similar. Buddhism disappeared (with no small effort by the ruling state then) from the land of its own birth. It 're-entered' the land in a significant way in the 19th and 20th century, ironically due to European interest in its substantive philosophical and spiritual contribution. And who could've thought that Ambedkar would publicly embrace Buddhism and renounce Hinduism in 1956. And along with him he brought a number of marginalized communities into its fold. Buddhism was never a religion in that sense but Ambedkar successfully made it so. And the effects of the efforts of preservation of Buddhism in lands like China, Japan, Sri Lanka, Burma and Thailand show-up in very interesting philosophical and cultural sense today. That preservation lasted a full 1500 years too.
Both these ponts prove one thing: that the pursuit of truthful and refined thinking is necessary. It is naive to hope for its understanding and acceptance among most of the people (in fact, the more educated a person is, the less likely he is to accept the plain and hard truths). But that does not preclude efforts at a) preservation, b) continuation, and c) drawing benefits for one's own personal gain and consequent deployment in one's own activities.
But today's time's are definitively over-the-top in one sense: even the base level of sensitivity to even mildly refined ideas is missing and importantly, as you rightly point out, respect for people who profess them. At least in the older times, while one may not agree with a philosopher or a monk, one at least respected the station that they occupied. Now the respect for that station too is lost: much to the harm of the people who have lost that respect. Fortunately, we can choose to be on the other side and respect not only the station but engage with the content that emerges out of these individuals, both present and past.
To which Martin responded on 17th Oct 2014:
...
In a way this reminds me of the French anti-communist thinker, Raymond Aron. Already in the 60's when there was a widespread faith in the West's superiority, Aron still had an understanding for the tormented process of modernisation in the rest of the world. Aron believed the West created the modern world with its political and economic innovations and material goals, but did not flinch from examining what this fact said about the modern world. As he saw it, the conflicts and contradictions thrown up by the pursuit of modernity had been hard enough to manage for Western societies for much of the last century. Industrial societies alone had seemed able to improve material conditions, and bring about a measure of social and economic equality; but the promise of equality, which staved off social unrest, was increasingly difficult to fulfill because specialisation kept producing fresh hieararchies.
Some parts of the West had achieved some reduction in material inequalities, due to a market economy which produced both desirable goods and the means to acquire them; organised labour, which made it possible for workers to demand higher wages and political liberty, which made the rulers accountable to the ruled. And some Western countries had also, however brutally in some cases, got the timing broadly right: They had managed to build resilient states before trying to turn peasants into citizens --- like some of the Mediterranean countries. The most successful European states had also accomplised a measure of economic growth before gradually extending democractic rights to a majority of the population. "No European country," Aron pointed out, "ever went through the phase of economic developmet which India and China are now experiencing, under a regime that was representative and democratic."
In the 60's up until the 80's Aron's points of view made him somewhat of an outsider in his discipline. But if you look at it from what we know today: Aron's assessment must be embarassing for those who have been daydreaming since 1989 about a worldwide upsurge of liberal democracy in tandem with capitalism. Indeed long before the rise of European totalitarianisms, urgent state-building and the search for rapid and high economic growth had doomed individual liberties to precarious existence in Japan. Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia and South Korean went on to show, after 1945, that a flourishing capitalist economy always was compatible with denial of democratic rights.
China has more recently achieved a form of capitalist modernity without embracing liberal democracy. And the latest example is Turkey, which boasts economic growth as well as regular elections. But these have not made the country break with long decades of authoritarian rule. Quote from a recent German newspaper article: "The arrival of Anatolian masses in politics has actually enabled a demagogue like Erdogan to imagine himself as a second Atartuk."
To which, Kushagra responded on 18th October 2014.
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