AMARTA SEN : The uncommon reader, Mint Lounge, July 27, 2013
Amartya Sen: The uncommon reader
The Nobel laureate on
his favorite writers, major friendships and influences
First
Published: Sat, Jul 27 2013. 12 08 AM IST
Sen lists Shaw and Tolstoy as two of his favourite authors. Photo: Ramesh Pathania/Mint
Rabindranath Tagore gave him his name. His maternal grandfather, Kshitimohan Sen, was a pioneering
scholar of Sanskrit. And he spent his formative years in Tagore’s Santiniketan
in West Bengal , in an ambience soaked with
literary and cultural resonances.
In this interview, Nobel
laureate Amartya Sen speaks about the books
he grew up with, how he came to economics, and his abiding love for the plays
of George Bernard Shaw, among other things.
Edited excerpts:
Tell us about your early life
in Santiniketan.
One side of it was quite
Sanskritic, immersed in the teachings of Tagore, but it was also very
cosmopolitan. My mother, Amita Sen, who grew up in Santiniketan, learned judo,
which would have been very unusual in the 1920s. She also appeared on stage in
dance-dramas, like Tagore’s Natir Puja, and played the lead in a number of
performances in Santiniketan and Kolkata. She won recognition for her part, and
I may be right in thinking that my father, who was teaching chemistry in Dhaka , first knew about her through her reputation as a
dancer.
I also made some
important friends there. For instance, the only English friend I knew when I
went to England in 1953 was
Leonard Elmhirst, who had lived in Santiniketan and started the Dartington Hall
School (in the UK
What kind of books were you
reading then?
I can’t say I was an
enormously systematic chooser of books to read. I read what came my way, which
obviously included a lot of standard reading like Shakespeare.
Between the age of 3 and
6, I lived in Mandalay (Myanmar Dhaka
before coming to Santiniketan. Previous to that, my reading was
classics-oriented. I was told I ought to know my Shakespeare. I ought to know
some poets, who I grew to like at the time, such as William Wordsworth.
I had some less
conventional tastes in poetry as well, such as Andrew Marvell, who, I don’t
think, many people in Kolkata and Santiniketan were reading then. Everyone
liked Lord Byron; so did I. I liked Dryden a lot. As it turned out later, he
was my colleague at Trinity College Cambridge, UK. For many years, as Master of
the college, I had to entertain people after dinner for drinks under the shadow
of Dryden, which is one of my favourite portraits in the college.
What was it about Dryden that
fascinated you?
It was the turn in his
thought that I found particularly appealing—like that phrase about the man who
whistled for want of a thought. That line stuck because I thought I saw them
all around me, men who were whistling mainly because they didn’t have a
thought. I liked Dryden’s ability to make a serious point in a light way.
Tell us about the writers you
met in Cambridge
I came to know E.M.
Forster well, simply because I was one of the Cambridge Apostles (an
intellectual secret society at Cambridge
You could be elected as
an Apostle for some years, but then, as you moved on, you became an “Angel”. As
an Angel, you could come to the meetings but it would have raised eyebrows if
you came too often. But Morgan was an exception, because, in my time, we were
meeting in his rooms at King’s (College). He used to say it was not proper for
him to be there all the time so he sometimes went to the chapel to listen to
the Evensong.
The other person I met,
and became close friends with, was Eric Hobsbawm. Many years later, in 1962, I
did a long European tour with Eric, and my then wife, Nabaneeta (Dev Sen). We
drove from Cambridge through Holland ,
Belgium , Germany and Austria
He was a big influence
on me. He was a Marxist. I was influenced by Marx, but never a Marxist. Then
there was Piero Sraffa, who was a bit like me, never a Marxist but interested
in Marx. Later, I wrote a paper on Sraffa, (Ludwig) Wittgenstein and (Antonio)
Gramsci.
What about the Marxists in
Kolkata?
Actually, I got to know
about Sraffa through highbrow Marxists in Calcutta
How did that happen?
Sukhamoy came to
Santiniketan in what must have been 1950. I was in intermediate science at that
point, enjoying physics and mathematics. Sukhamoy, who was studying at Presidency College
Of the many things he
and I talked about were artist Mukul Dey’s paintings. Sukhamoy
was highbrow enough to know about Dey and form an opinion about him. We also
talked about what he thought of Rabindranath as a painter.
In 1951 when I decided
to apply to Presidency with the thought of studying physics, he suggested I
consider economics. So, in the summer of 1951, after my ISC examinations were
over, I read some books on economics, by John Hicks for instance, and a bit of Adam Smith. It gradually became
clear to me that I wanted to study economics. So I changed my application, and
dropped a line to Sukhamoy telling him of my decision. He was very pleased to
hear it.
Tell us about your years at
Presidency.
The day I arrived at
Presidency, it was raining. It was 1953, and as I was going up that famous
staircase from where Subhash Bose was supposed to have
chucked the principal down, I encountered Sukhamoy. He offered to show me
around, took me to Coffee House, and I felt quickly at ease in the company of
people I hugely admired.
I don’t know anyone else
with Sukhamoy’s command over knowledge across the world, on any subject,
combined with discipline and intellect. This, actually, cultivated a laziness
in me. I could either go to library if I was looking for some information, or
ask simply Sukhamoy—and he would give me an organized systematic account of it.
Tapas Majumdar was
another great influence, and Bhabatosh Datta was a model teacher in terms of
lucidity. The big thing about Tapas da was
his encouraging me to take apart any problem. Bhabatoshbabu, though a great teacher, was very respectful of
received theory. Since I was not so respectful, I’d say to Tapas da, “I don’t seem to
follow the argument, or there must be something I am not getting.” And he would
say, “Yes, either that, or there might be a theoretical mistake.” That was
quite something to say at that time.
You have written about Tagore,
had a public exchange of letters with Japanese writer Kenzaburo Oe, and been
interested in literature all along.
Literature was very much
a part of my life. George Bernard Shaw is one writer I could
claim to have read everything of. I don’t think his politics was very profound,
it was rather naïve, but I still long to see a new Shaw play. I spent a lot of
time reading complicated plays like Man and Superman.
Was it Shaw’s drama of ideas
that attracted you?
Yes. He’s quite
different from Shakespeare, who conveys a thought
of universal nature. Though King Lear is
my favourite, I am also interested in minor plays like Coriolanus. I was
fascinated by a character like Coriolanus who had an admirable efficiency as
well as an ability to take on the world with a lack of modesty and disregard
for how other people perceived him. I thought I knew some people like that.
But I think plays like Othello are too simple. I once wrote a
doggerel based on it to tease my literary friends. But some of them took it to
be a serious contribution.
Do you read any fiction these
days?
I read late in the
night, when I am usually too exhausted to start a new book, and almost always
go for non-fiction unless my wife recommends something. I can’t call myself a
serious fiction reader any longer, which I used to be before.
Leo Tolstoy is another writer I have read pretty much everything of. I
love his short stories, especiallyHow Much Land
Are there any favourite musical
pieces and films you keep going back to?
I like Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan. Also Mozart, whose Magic Flute is probably my favourite. I don’t
think of myself as a serious music appreciator, but I usually listen to some
music when I write.
As for films, Satyajit Ray has been a great anchor
in my life. The Apu Trilogy was very appealing to me. Since I grew up in
Santiniketan, I knew a lot of the world he was depicting in the films, except
for Apur Sansar. I was also greatly moved by Devi. I was
concerned by the way young women were treated, but in this case, the woman was
not being treated with unkindness, but with super kindness, which ultimately
resulted in tragedy.
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