Monday, December 20, 2010

India Australia Third Test Match, Perth, Australia, January 16 - 20, 2008
First Day Report
(Written in January 2008)


Part I. On the Australian Team's Bowling

I will let the Indian sports journalists comment, with the benefit of hindsight, on the pre-match build-up of hype and hyperbole about the cricket pitch and Shaun Tait. In fact, Sidharth Vaidyanathan had done a good job of commenting, tongue-in-cheek, about it even before the match started, in his match preview report on Cricinfo.com titled, 'India face uphill task in the Wild West'. It is also instructive for readers to look at another Cricinfo article, 'West side story', Dileep Premachandran's account of the fearsome reputation of the Perth cricket pitch, particularly Curtly Ambrose's divine spell of fast bowling in the 1992-93 season at Perth that took down seven wickets, all with conceding just one run. Apart from these two articles, the enthusiastic cricket fan should avoid taking the match reports in the media (print, websites and TV channels) seriously. The media has decided, unanimously, that Australia has gained the upper edge in the match because of two late wickets in the day. There are even some journalists taking Brett Lee's figure of 3 wickets for 64 runs at the end of the day, in spite of a costly opening spell of 25 runs in 4 overs, as signs of a maturing bowler. The fact is that, to the last man, the media has missed one of the most important lessons in the history of cricket, as will be explained in my arguments below.

The level of fast bowling skills that were on display from the Australian team today is one of the most telling evidence that, in spite of winning 16 consecutive test matches twice, Australia could not possibly claim to have ever equaled the dominance of world cricket that the West Indies side achieved from the mid-70s to the early 90s. It was under Clive Lloyd that the West Indies perfected the strategy of employing a sustained pace attack using a quartet of fast bowlers. Before that, there was the famous Lillee-Thompson duo, but otherwise, fast bowlers relied on their individual skills and efforts, rather than operated as a multi-pronged pace battery. With their new approach, the West Indians elevated fast bowling to a world of soulful artistry. At an elementary level, it required fitness and endurance to consistently run in to bowl at speeds upwards of 140 kmph. However, it was much more important that it required graceful body movements and a natural sense of rhythm to be able to do it with the minimum of effort. It was this grace and rhythm that made possible two crucial elements of the West Indies pace attack that the current Australian team lacks. The first of these two elements was sustained intensity of fast bowling for a full session of play. The second was to bowl accurately at high speeds without sacrificing variety.

The West Indies bowlers were natural athletes, the Caribbean being always famous for sprinters. In addition, they had grown up to think of fast bowling as an high art, an expression of their soulful Calypso rhythm. It was this combination that teased out their natural abilities to focus their mental and physical energies on the bowling. As a result, they brought a deep sense of professionalism to the craft of fast bowling. The first spell of overs for a team batting against the West Indies was played out in a world entirely different from the physical one. It required the greatest of concentration on the batsman's part to counter their pace, accuracy and control. As an analogy, one might say that getting through the first hour of play required the same intense concentration as listening, in pin-drop silence, to Bach's Gospel music in a chapel. The readers are advised to learn about the skill and concentration required for an opening batsman to face the West Indies fast bowling successfully by reading the famous trilogy of books by Sunil Gavaskar, namely, Sunny Days, Runs 'n' Ruins and Idols.

In contrast, the current Australian fast bowling strategy is to hurl the ball at a fast pace, hoping that the sledging and the pre-match hyperbole would intimidate the batsman and the umpires enough to get them the wicket. To be sure, Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee have pioneered some interesting techniques, as will be explained below, but on the whole, it is their brute-force, soul-less approach which often brings them success, and this is how they have won many of their tests, starting from the captaincy of Steve Waugh to his successor, Ricky Ponting. What they lacked in their professional abilities to examine the batsman's technical skills and concentration, they made up for with their hunting-in-a-pack, sledging tactics. Whereas the West Indies bowlers worked on the mental disintegration of the batsmen, who were often of world-class reputation, purely through their expertise in fast bowling, the Australians have come to rely on sledging on the field and propaganda through the media.

Now, I must interject to say that the Australian fast bowler who comes closest to the famed West Indian bowlers of the 70s and 80s, in terms of professional expertise, is Glenn McGrath. His approach to fast bowling is worth examining here. A fast bowler typically has a long run-up and there are lots of body movements involved before he delivers the ball. In contrast, the batsman has relatively little movement of his feet, legs, arms, wrists and torso. On the other hand, the batsman has only a split-second to react to the fast ball coming at him, and as a result, he is definitely going to make very minor mistakes in his posture, balance and stroke-play. Thanks to the high pace of the ball, these minor faults could be exploited and amplified. With this rationale, McGrath developed the strategy that the bowler did not need to place the ball at different places while bowling at high speeds. In fact, this would often lead to mistakes, in view of the large number of body movements involved. Instead, he figured that the bowler should stick to a narrow, nagging line just outside the off-stump. This provided for great accuracy, while maintaining high speeds, and offered scope for varying the bounce and the length. The punchline, however, was that since it was just outside the off-stump, with just a little bit of swing, the batsman could be induced to play away from his body, and the ball could go for a catch or crash into the stumps if he didn't play the shot correctly.

As part of the industrial approach to cricket pioneered by the Australian team, McGrath's bowling strategy was a cornerstone. However, one must note that the West Indies bowlers were able to maintain variety and pace as well as accuracy. In my mind, the quintessential personification of this skill is the picture of Curtly Ambrose flaying his arms and cursing loudly in the rare occasion that he made a mistake. By the end of his career, Ambrose was the world's premier exponent of the fast bowler's art. He could quickly gauge the batsman's weaknesses and he could place the ball precisely on the pitch with the design of exploiting the batsman's mistakes -- mental disintegration at a very sophisticated level. Invariably, he knew immediately after releasing the ball, if he had aimed it right or not. He made mistakes rarely, but when he did, the spectators witnessed his loud cursing. I must mention here that Curtly Ambrose was just one example in the long tradition of the West Indian art of fast bowling. Remember the Whispering Death? The point is that this type of professional expertise in fast bowling could not be expected from this so-called world champion Australian cricket team of today.

Coming back to the sorry state of the current Australian bowlers, their litany of woes does not start with Ponting's decision to go in with four pace bowlers, but it is definitely a milestone. Having built-up huge physique and arm power by pumping iron regularly, these bowlers simply lack the natural grace for serious fast bowling, and it tells in their inability to bowl with sustained intensities at the rate of 13 to 15 overs an hour. A fielding team is expected to bowl 90 overs in a day of test cricket. But, by the time this 'fearsome' quartet of Australian pace bowlers had bowled the half-way mark of 45 overs, they had already run more than half-hour over time. Even worse, they simply could not sustain the intensity of fast bowling for prolonged periods. Either they could not control the ball at such high pace, or they became too tired in the heat (36 C to 39 C) to bowl at high speeds for long duration. When they strayed even a little, they were hammered for boundaries, since the Indians had gambled on opening their innings with Virender Sehwag. After the first ten overs, the score read like that of a one-day match -- 50 for no loss. This Australian team simply lacks the technical proficiency and the many years of training required to elevate fast bowling to an art that the West Indians had done so beautifully in their prime.

In spite of the two wickets that fell late in the first day, that of Dravid and Laxman, rather unnecessarily, the Indian team must realize that the Australian bowling attack simply barks and does not bite. The Australians also could not possibly get through another full session of sustained fast bowling. So, if the Indians survive, without losing a wicket, during the first hour on the second day, keeping in mind that weather predictions are for a hot day, there is simply no way the Australians can bowl over 145 kmph consistently through the rest of the day. Moreover, this effort of surviving the first hour would also serve to take the shine off the second new ball. Only an occasional ball would be really fast, but otherwise India is looking at a real good scoring opportunity. The Australians don't have a professional full-time spinner, and they could be made to pay for this error of judgment if India's tail of experienced cricketers -- Anil Kumble, Mahendra Dhoni and Irfan Pathan -- wags defiantly. If the Indians keep their wits about them, there is no reason why they cannot reach a total of 400 in their first innings.

(Part II on the batting would follow later)






India Australia Third Test Match, Perth, Australia, January 16 - 20, 2008
First Day Report
(Written in January 2008)

Part II. On the Batting

As in Part I, Sunil Gavaskar's success with facing the quartet of West Indian pace attack remains the defining characteristic for the senior batsmen in the current Indian side -- Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Saurav Ganguly and VVS Laxman. It was Gavaskar's mastery of his batsmanship, along with his talent for good prose writing which he employed to write books about cricket that were the most important learning experience for a generation of aspiring school children growing up before today's ubiquity of television sets in Indian middle class homes. To really understand the current Indian batting line-up, one must keep in mind a very deep and fertile observation that Sir VS Naipaul, the 2001 Nobel laureate in Literature, had made about the former colonies of the British empire. Naipaul's thesis is that the countries that evolved out of the British colonies are half-made societies, societies that are constantly trying to adapt to their colonial legacy from the past, but never really achieving a true sense of their own identity in the modern world. This is precisely the case with how each of the four senior batsmen came to be shaped by Gavaskar's legacy. Sachin Tendulkar was the first whiz-kid out of the block, getting to play test cricket for India at a young age of 16 in 1989. He is also the most accomplished, with 38 test centuries, career test runs exceeding 11500 runs and a batting average above 55 runs per innings. Among the four, he has the sharpest cricketing brain and the most athletic body. Rahul Dravid, through sheer will and persistence, trained himself to reach Gavaskar's level of concentration and patience, and his ability to play marathon innings. VVS Laxman inherited Gavaskar's mastery of technique, his knowledge of facing fast bowling of the highest class and his appetite for big scores. Saurav Ganguly picked up Gavaskar's competitiveness and his quick temper, along with playing certain shots on the off-side well.

For all their promise, none of these four would go onto make major advances beyond Gavaskar, purely from the perspective of developing expertise as test batsmen. Ganguly and Tendulkar would soon establish themselves as indispendible members of the one-day team early on, and after some struggle Dravid followed them to fame on this new arena of one-day cricket, which was becoming more and more popular in the nineties. Laxman would be a late addition to this journey, and an early exit from one-day cricket. Having spent large parts of their attention on the quick-scoring demands of the one-day game, they could hardly expect to better Gavaskar's achievements as a test batsman. This can be clearly seen by the paucity of triple centuries from the Indian side. Their frame of mind is simply not meant for such prolonged demands on their concentration. Multi-tasking between test cricket, one-day cricket and appearing in media endorsements did them in. Laxman would display significant promise once, during his epic innings of 281 in the Kolkatta test against Australia in 2001, but he would never get the recognition and encouragement from the selectors and the team to establish himself as a successful batsman. If he was lucky enough to be selected, he would still have to bat at the sixth position, salvaging what he could with the batting abilities of India's tail. As a result, today, whereas he has the technique for it, he simply lacks the will and motivation to play another massive innings.

I must also mention another important phenomenon here which turned out to be a severe blow to the collective will of the Indian team to perform at high standards of professionalism. This was the match fixing scandals they were hit with from the mid-to-late 90s. It took enough character and sincerity from the Indian team to put those nightmare days behind them, that they could hardly be expected to focus solely on winning test series against the then powerhouse test playing countries. On another note, these four senior batsmen were, of course, also influenced by other batsmen of earlier times from India. Gundappa Vishwanath, Dilip Vengsarkar, Dilip Sardesai, Vijay Manjrekar, Sandip Patil and Mohammad Azharuddin have left their marks on these players purely in test cricket. In addition, Krishnamachari Srikanth, Mohinder Amarnath and Kapil Dev were also major influences on their one-day careers. Moreover, the junior batsmen in the current Indian side -- Virender Sehwag, Irfan Pathan, Mahendra Dhoni, Wassim Jaffer -- have grown up idolizing these four senior batsmen, in particular Sachin Tendulkar. Virender Sehwag, who scored India's first triple century in 2004, has fashioned himself after Tendulkar, with an attacking instinct and quick hand-eye coordination. But, his technique lacks footwork, and his temperament lacks patience. With this test, he is making his comeback to test cricket after being sidelined for over a year. To his credit, he has worked hard on his fitness level, and from watching his interview with Harsha Bhogle on TV, I would say that he seems genuinely motivated to make his mark. This, then is the historical background of the famed Indian batting line-up, before the start of the third test between Australia and India played at Perth, during January 16 - 20, 2008.

As I explained in Part I, the much hyped Australian pace bowling failed to live up to the propaganda. The first over from Brett Lee cost them 9 runs. If one saw the ball-by-ball commentary on Cricinfo, one could ascertain that Sehwag was showing virtually no footwork, but was simply utilizing his quick hand-eye coordination. Whenever the bowler gave him enough width, and he managed to connect, the hit was clean and the ball didn't fail to get to the boundary. At the end of the tenth over, Sehwag had made 23 runs off 37 balls with 5 boundaries. Wassim Jaffer, batting from the other end, had made 15 runs off 26 balls with 2 fours. Extras accounted for 12 runs (5 wides, 3 noballs, 4 legbyes). The score stood exactly at 50. In the first five overs, both Brett Lee and Mitchell Johnson hit the 150 kmph consistenly, nearly 10 kmph above the speeds that the Indian bowler can bowl. It was when the much slower, but accurate Stuart Clark (135 - 140 kmph range) came in to bowl the sixth over, that the Australian bowling strategy gained a semblance of order. Sehwag departed in the 17th over for 29, caught behind by Gilchrist off Johnson. Dravid came in to join Jaffer. But, Jaffer had been simply taking his cue from the non-striking batsman through out his innings. If Sehwag attacked, he attacked. If Sehwag remained quiet, he did the same. When he got out, driving away from his body, in the 20th over off Lee, he had played out 25 consecutive dot balls! Next, Tendulkar came in to join Dravid, and they managed to play out the few overs remaining before lunch. Notably, Shaun Tait was introduced in the 21st over, and he bowled a maiden first over to Dravid. However, in the 23rd over, he gave up 8 runs, a 2, a noball, a boundary and a single. He did manage to hit speeds upwards of 154 kmph, but Tendulkar had had the measure of him by the end of the over. At lunch, India were 74/2 in 24 overs.

After lunch, Lee and Tait continued to bowl. However, this time, their speeds were much lower (140 - 145 kmph). Tendulkar and Dravid managed to bat the entire post-lunch session without losing a wicket. Dravid was dropped off Lee in the 28th over by Michael Clarke, but otherwise the session belonged to the Indians. At the end of the 32nd over, Johnson and Clark replaced Lee and Tait. Symonds replaced Clark with his medium pace in the 42nd over, and Tait replaced Johnson in the 45th over. Symonds made a loud appeal for lbw against Tendulkar in the 45th over. The 51st over was bowled by Michael Clarke. But, none of these changes stopped the steady scoring. At tea, 51 overs had been bowled (nine over behind schedule) and India had made 177 runs for the loss of 2 wickets, with Dravid on 52 off 99 balls and 8 fours, and Tendulkar on 59 off 102 balls and 8 fours. India had made 103 runs in the 27 overs after lunch, and Dravid had batted himself out of his poor form.

If the post-lunch session exposed the weakness of Australia's bowling attack, as I had explained in detail in Part I, the post-tea session exposed the weakness of India's batting line-up. They simply lack staying power to produce a massive innings, as I have explained above. One after another, Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid and Laxman got out by the end of the day. Some credit must be given here to the bowlers. First, Brett Lee plugged the run leaks with more accurate bowling right after tea, and he got Tendular lbw in the 58th over. Tendulkar had made 71 runs off 128 balls with 9 fours. Clark from the other end had been steadily leaking runs. When he was replaced with Johnson in the 61st over, he got Ganguly within four balls, caught by Hussey, trying to hit a wide delivery. But Tait replaced Lee in the 62nd over, Dravid and Laxman regained control of the game, and they managed to make Johnson ineffective as well. In the 8 overs between 61 and 69, they took the score from 215/4 to 253/4. Symonds and Clarke came on to bowl spin from the 70th over. They managed to contain the boundaries for 5 overs. But, Dravid forced himself onto them by hitting two more boundaries, and got out to Symonds in the 78th over to a poor shot. Ponting, the captain, brought Lee right back in the 80th over, and the second new ball available in the 81 over. Rather than handle the situation carefully, Laxman also got out to a poor shot. Pathan and Dhoni got together to hit two more boundaries, before the day's session closed out after 84 overs.

The lesson of the last session of play was that India simply lack the will to become a major contender to be the best test playing nation in the world. Right now, the Indian team is banking on its considerable experience, given that there are five senior players. Subconsciously, they are trying to get through the series by cruising along, without the will or the vision, at the fag end of their careers. A word on Laxman's performance. Perhaps he may be forgiven for a lapse of concentration in his batting that cost him his wicket, when one considers the rude manner in which he was shoved down the batting order from his favorite position at Number 3 to Number 6. He had made an elegant 109 in the Sydney test just ten days ago. For the first time, an Indian batsman had played convincingly against the Australian pace attack, and the other top order batsman didn't even have the forthrightness to accomodate him higher up in the top order. This shows the level of insecurity that actually lies behind the aura of invincibility that the Indian public has come to associate with Tendulkar, Dravid and Ganguly. It is clear that Laxman would not get any recognition or encouragement to play another grand innings like his 281. The only option for him is to forget his team's performance, and to challenge himself to meet personal goals. If he takes this approach, he could, for example, open the batting with Virender Sehwag. Finally, the captain Anil Kumble must be commended for a number of bold decisions he has taken during this series. He is working relentlessly to eliminate weakness from the team. Yuvraj Singh and Harbhajan Singh were dropped, giving place to Virender Sehwag and Irfan Pathan. Kumble has wisely decided against going in with two spinners on the Perth pitch which was supposed to favor pace bowling. In any case, Harbhajan Singh has been shown to be ineffective in India - Pakistan series in 2005 on pitches that did not offer any help to spinners. In the next match, Wassim Jaffer should also be dropped, and Laxman asked to open the batting. This might provide a personal challenge to Laxman, which might interest him enough to go for a big score, knowing that he could forge partnerships with the others in the top order.

Finally, the readers from Australia, may be wondering about the approach of the Indian batting during the Melbourne test, when Dravid and Jaffer simply played out maiden over after maiden over, scoring just 6 runs and losing a one wicket in the first ten overs. Tendulkar and Ganguly were supposed to have played fighting innings, but they only made 62 and 43 respectively. India's batting strategy would have seemed bizarre and self-defeating. That is why it is important to realize the role of Gavaskar on the Indian batsmanship. All these strategies were forged at the time Gavaskar had faced the truly fearsome West Indies pace attack. The current batch of senior batsmen in the Indian side were behaving like Naipaul's 'Mimic Men' when they simply copied the strategy pioneered by Gavaskar two decades ago, and they failed to adapt it intelligently to the fact that Brett Lee's pace quartet was bowling many loose balls.
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Monday, September 27, 2010

Line-by-line commentary to the first few pages of Professor Amartya Sen's book, "The Argumentative Indian"
(written in June 2007)


The Argumentative Indian
Writings on Indian Culture, History and Identity
Amartya Sen

Comment 1: Like Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand and Joseph Schumpeter’s Creative Destruction, Amartya Sen’s concept of an Argumentative Indian may yet prove to have no scientific validity in the long run. By scientific validity, I mean addressing questions of the following type: does it give a rational account of the behavior of a typical Indian? Or is it the best intellectual framework for the progress of India? In fact, as Professor Sen readily admits in the book’s preface, “I am very aware that there are other ways of proceeding.”

Beyond the reasons pointed out in the book in support of the argumentative tradition -- that it promotes democracy and public reasoning, resists social inequality, and removes poverty and deprivation – this tradition has the great strength that it is founded on a non-violent, civil manner of dispute resolution, in contrast to the 'clash of civilizations' approach. In that respect, the argumentative tradition is an authentic representation of Indian culture, history and identity. For the same reason, its outlook, in an age of relative peace and stability, is essentially modern and befits academic scholarship.





PART ONE

Voice and Heterodoxy


I

The Argumentative Indian

Prolixity is not alien to us in India. We are able to talk at some length. Krishna Menon’s record of the longest speech ever delivered at the United Nations (nine hours non-stop), established half a century ago (when Menon was leading the Indian delegation), has not been equalled by anyone from anywhere. Other peaks of loquaciousness have been scaled by other Indians. We do like to speak.

Comment 2: Sure, we do like to speak. But the vast majority of Indians do not have any particular facility with language, tongue-tied as they are with English, and speaking in a guttural, intuitive manner without much emphasis on grammar and syntax when it comes to their own native language.

We do like to speak, and villagers speaking out at panchayats is historical evidence for the tradition of public reasoning in India. But, as a people, Indians do not have the rhetorical training for reasoning in public in a logical manner. To put this in perspective, the public speeches given by the great Western orators like Demosthenes and Pericles in Greece, and Cicero and Crassus in Rome have been studied for their rhetorical nuances for centuries at Schools and Universities in the West. Indians haven’t had the historical benefit of such an education. On the other hand, public narration of fables and puranic myths, and enactment of these stories in the form of musicals and drama on religious occasions is quite common. Even more common among the Indian public are cinematic dialogues and Bollywood songs. Less common, but more important are the public meetings during the time of political elections.

On another note, among caricatures of the typical Indian are the obedient son, the enigmatic sadhu, the suffering housewife, all suggesting a strong undercurrent of a culture of silent penance (mouna vrat). Definitely, Indians are known not only for loud complaining, but also for exercising restraint and accepting defeat sportingly.






This is not a new habit. The ancient Sanskrit epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which are frequently compared with the Iliad and the Odyssey, are colossally longer than the works that the modest Homer could manage. Indeed, the Mahabharata alone is about seven times as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey put together.

Comment 3: This is a double edged sword. At first glance, it appears that putting the Sanskrit epics on a back-patting, leg-pulling camaraderie with the Greek classics serves to establish the authenticity of Indian literature in the eyes of international audience. However, the Indian literary tradition goes back even further to the four Vedas. In fact, the Vedas are quite relevant to the argumentative (spoken) tradition, because they were not just read quietly by individuals, but were chanted loudly in public. There is nothing in Greek literature that compares to the Vedas either from a historical perspective or from a literary perspective.






The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are certainly great epics: I recall with much joy how my own life was vastly enriched when I encountered them first as a restless youngster looking for intellectual stimulation as well as sheer entertainment. But they proceed from stories to stories woven around their principal tales, and are engagingly full of dialogues, dilemmas and alternative perspectives. And we encounter masses of arguments and counterarguments spread over incessant debates and disputations.

Comment 4: While there is plenty of evidence in Indian literature for “dialogues, dilemmas and alternative perspectives”, there is nothing in it that demonstrates how these states of ignorance and confusion could resolve themselves to truths and certainties. Certainly, nothing like Euclid’s theorem – proof development of geometry in a self-evident manner, nor like Socrates’ willingness to use purely rational arguments, in dialogues with the skeptical young men of Athens, to arrive at the truth.






Dialogue and Significance

The arguments are also, often enough, quite substantive. For example, the famous Bhagavad Gita, which is one small section of the Mahabharata, presents a tussle between two contrary moral positions – Krishna’s emphasis on doing one’s duty, on one side, and Arjuna’s focus on avoiding bad consequences (and generating good ones), on the other.

Comment 5: The Bhagavad Gita discusses the concept of the soul in a much more sophisticated manner than the rest of the Mahabharata. For this reason, it has often been suggested that the Bhagavad Gita itself was written sometime during or after the advent of the Buddhist and Jainist theologies which discussed the transmigration of the soul rigorously, much after the original compilation of the Mahabharata. In particular, the author(s) of the Bhagavad Gita purportedly favored philosophical clarity to a great extent over historical accuracy. It is true that generation after generation has found inspiration in the ‘transcendental’ clarity of the Gita, most recently the International Krishna Consciousness movement. However, can the Gita, which favors philosophical and ‘transcendental’ clarity in such a lopsided manner, be quoted as the prime example of the argumentative tradition of India? If so, it would imply, as scholars like Sir V. S. Naipaul have pointed out, that Indians have no scientific tools for exploring their identities and achieving self-knowledge. This is why it is important to focus on the four original Vedas rather than the Bhagavad Gita.






The debate occurs on the eve of the great war that is a central event in the Mahabharata. Watching the two armies readying for war, profound doubts about the correctness of what they are doing are raised by Arjuna, the peerless and invincible warrior in the army of the just and honourable royal family (the Pandavas) who are about to fight the unjust usurpers (the Kauravas).

Comment 6: While the text of the Bhagavad Gita deals with extremely deep material, it has to be said that it is not really a debate, or a dialogue in the sense of Plato. There is a certain amount of coercion, in that one of the parties to the dialogue is a supreme being, who is above good and evil, beyond birth and death, and is only condescending to illuminate the other party in some transcendental matters. In particular, the supreme being would not discuss with a human being every time he/she is deeply disturbed by philosophical questions. Only a true devotee like Arjuna would have that privilege. This is in contrast with Plato-type dialogues which can be naturally enacted in daily lives by ordinary people.

On another note, the Mahabharata by itself portrays its characters as larger than life, in keeping with an epic imagery (for example, Arjuna is the ‘peerless and invincible warrior’). Whereas the Gita deals with the doubts and fears of an individual. A doubting warrior-general would be less than heroic in the larger canvas of the Mahabharata, and his state of doubt would not get more than a few lines, by way of attention, in the text of the epic. This is another example where the Mahabharata and Bhagavad Gita do not seem to share the same poetic background and do not address the same themes.






Arjuna questions whether it is right to be concerned only with one’s duty to promote a just cause and be indifferent to the misery and the slaughter – even of one’s kin – that the war itself would undoubtedly cause. Krishna, a divine incarnation in the form of a human being (in fact, he is also Arjuna’s charioteer), argues against Arjuna. His response takes the form of articulating principles of action – based on the priority of doing one’s duty – which have been repeated again and again in Indian philosophy. Krishna insists on Arjuna’s duty to fight, irrespective of his evaluation of the consequences. It is a just cause, and, as a warrior and a general on whom his side must rely, Arjuna cannot waver from his obligations, no matter what the consequences are.

Comment 7: There are some very subtle points here. Firstly, Indian literature does not really have a serious theory of morals. At least, it is reasonable to expect one to accept that Panchathantra and Jataka tales are not in the same class as the writings of Aristotle and Plato on morals. What does exist is a pervading sense of mental peace (shanthi) in Indian culture. When an Indian is severely disturbed by philosophical doubts at various moments in his/her life, it is for the seeking of this shanthi that he/she aims for. His/her sense of right and wrong is indicated by the degree of attainment of this shanthi, perhaps in close consultation with a Guru (for more mundane matters, he/she would consult with family members -- Matha, Pitha, Guru, Deivam). From a cultural perspective, it is more plausible that Arjuna’s doubts and questions arose from the necessity to seek this mental peace and from the pressing immediate need to find the will to fight the war, rather than from a broad philosophical framework of morals. Of course, there was also the issue of re-birth, as a common Indian belief, if one committed sins. But what exactly these sins are, is not defined by any of the religious theologies of Ancient India beyond requiring a strict adherence to the rituals, definitely nothing by way of the Ten Commandments. For example, would hesitating to fight before a war constitute a sin?

Secondly, one must note that the recurrence of this ‘principle of action’ -- the priority of doing one’s duty -- in Indian philosophy happens historically only after the Bhagavad Gita. Duty of an individual to an external entity, whether it be the state or a supreme being, is a quintessentially Greek concept, which Socrates paid for with his life. Once the concepts of the ideal state and the duties of its citizens towards that state were developed through centuries of effort by the Greek philosophers in a thoroughly rational manner, it is a relatively easier proposition to assimilate that sense of duty with the indigenous Brahminical, Buddhist and Jainist theologies, under the aegis of a supreme being. That said, one must admit that the Bhagavad Gita is an extremely beautiful and poetic unification of the major philosophies of that time, whose power of motivating the individual to equanimous action is unique and unrivalled. The effectiveness of this transformational power of the Gita can still be observed among the devotees of the Krishna Consciousness movement.

Thirdly, the direct association of Arjuna with the supreme being as his friend, his philosopher and his guide is analogous to Jesus Christ's direct association with God in a father-son relationship. This is the first incidence, in an Indian religious document, where a human associates with God in a give-take, loving relationship. Before this occurrence, idol worship, nirvana, ahimsa, agnosticism, yogic penance, fire worship, animal sacrifice and nature worship were the main religious practices in India, and the conception of God whenever it existed was that of a vengeful one fully dominating the individual’s psyche. In addition, the precepts of the Bhagavad Gita were also the first forays of Indian philosophy into monotheism, an important legacy of the Judeo-Christian religions, going back to Moses and Zoroaster. These are some of the examples that show that the Gita (and the Upanishads) assimilated the major streams of thoughts in the World at that time into Indian culture.






Krishna’s hallowing of the demands of duty wins the argument, at least as seen in the religious perspective. Indeed, Krishna’s conversation with Arjuna, the Bhagavad Gita, became a treatise of great theological importance in Hindu philosophy, focusing particularly on the ‘removal’ of Arjuna’s doubts.

Comment 8: The theological importance of the Gita in subsequent Hindu philosophy is three-fold. Firstly, the Gita and the Upanishads, formed the Vedanta philosophy, which line of investigation led to a great debate within Hinduism, about the concepts of Advaitha and Visishtadvaitha, that prolonged right into the middle ages. Secondly, by subsuming the major tenets of Buddhism and Jainism, the Gita re-established Hinduism as the pre-dominant religion in India. Thirdly, with its other-worldly concerns of the soul and its relationship to God, the Bhagavad Gita pre-occupied the Indian scholar with its transcendental clarity so much, that he/she then did not focus on empirical investigations of the natural world for many centuries. To be fair, empirical investigations did not take off in a serious way in the Western World too until the revolutionary discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes and Newton at the end of the middle ages. But by then, the remaining empirical traditions in India were close to extinction. For example, Astronomy had degenerated into Astrology, and Ayurveda was waiting for the British to be replaced by Allopathy. The only phenomenon anywhere close to empirical investigation that India was prepared for at the end of the middle ages was the advent of militant Hinduism and Sikhism. On a different note, it would be interesting to study the influence of Bhagavad Gita on the Mughlai period of Indian history (e.g. Sufism, Din-Illahi, Bhakthi movement).






Krishna’s moral position has also been eloquently endorsed by many philosophical and literary commentators across the world, such as Christopher Isherwood and T. S. Eliot. Isherwood in fact translated the Bhagavad Gita into English. This admiration for the Gita, and for Krishna’s arguments in particular, has been a lasting phenomenon in parts of European culture. It was spectacularly praised in the early nineteenth century by Wilhelm von Humboldt as ‘the most beautiful, perhaps the only true philosophical song existing in any known tongue’. In a poem in Four Quartets, Eliot summarizes Krishna’s view in the form of an admonishment: ‘And do not think of the fruit of action. / Fare forward.’ Eliot explains: ‘Not fare well, / But fare forward, voyagers.’

Comment 9: The Bhagavad Gita has had major influences on many World famous figures, notably Mahatma Gandhi and Albert Einstein. However, its most important influence on the great thinkers in the 20th century has been on mathematicians. Andre Weil, a giant of 20th century mathematics adopted the Gita as his system of belief. In fact, by the end of the 19th century in Europe, the individual’s duties to the state as advocated by ancient Greek philosophy had been replaced, in the public’s conscience, by the emphasis on the freedom and rights of the individual as advocated by the Renaissance Enlightenment. As an unfortunate and unlikely result of this development, during the 1930’s in France, individual glory and prize-driven egomania were the common attitudes among the pioneers and thinkers of science. To counter this malaise, Andre Weil formed the Bourbaki group of mathematicians, all of whom were anonymous members (while they were members), and got no individual credit for their publication. Yet the mathematical research of Bourbaki had a profound impact on 20th century mathematics. To wit, this group alone produced three Fields Medallists. To be truly devoted to one’s research without craving for the fruits of action is very much in the spirit of Bhavagad Gita.

Another mathematician Kurt Godel had also adopted the Gita as the foundation of his beliefs. He was one of the greatest, if not the greatest, logician of the 20th century. In fact, some concepts like the different levels of consciousness found in the Bhagavad Gita have direct bearings on Godel's research work in logic, for example, on the different levels of certainties in mathematical logic, from a theorem to a contradiction.

Other major developments in 20th century mathematics in the spirit of Bhagavad Gita were (i) in unifying the concepts of number and geometry through algebra. It is notable here that the success of mathematicians (primarily Grothendieck, Serre, Weil, Zariski), in establishing deep unifying connections between number and geometry is in striking contrast with centuries-old problems resisting attempts to unify the concepts of number and motion (ref., Riemann Hypothesis), (ii) recall G. H. Hardy’s comment on Srinivasan Ramanujan: “… But with his memory, his patience, and his power of calculation, he combined a power of generalization, a feeling for form, and a capacity for rapid modification of his hypotheses, that were often really startling, and made him, in his own peculiar field, without a rival in his day.” It must be said though, that Hardy’s comments do not fully capture Ramanujan as a mathematician. Ramanujan was a powerfully original and penetratingly insightful mathematician, not just a grand unifier with an eye for elegance. There is always this restlessness and manic energy about Ramanujan, which is quite in contrast to the ideals of mukthi in Hindu scholarship or nirvana in Buddhist scholarship. In that sense, he was a truly modern thinker who just happened to be from India.

And yet, as a debate in which there are two reasonable sides, the epic Mahabharata itself presents, sequentially, each of the two contrary arguments with much care and sympathy.

Comment 10: Perhaps a large part of the care and sympathy can be attributed to the fact that for the first time in Indian religious mythology, a human being was in direct conversation with the supreme being, the sole and single God, under whose command the universe functions. Also, the brotherly love that Arjuna shares with Krishna is similar to Jesus Christ’s filial love for the Christian God. The love in the relationship between the God and the devotee also accounts for the care and sympathy in the conversation. The third factor is that the philosophical depth of the material discussed, by itself, demands much care and caution. This third factor, while present, is not as central as in Plato’s dialogues.

Indeed, the tragic desolation that the post-combat and post-carnage land – largely the Indo-Gangetic plain – seems to face towards the end of the Mahabharata can even be seen as something of a vindication of Arjuna’s profound doubts. Arjuna’s contrary arguments are not really vanquished, no matter what the ‘message’ of the Bhagavad Gita is meant to be. There remains a powerful case for ‘faring well’, and not just ‘forward’.[1]

Comment 11: The tragic desolation of the post-combat land in the Mahabharata does indeed remind one of common every day tragedies of poverty and deprivation in the real world. Yes, the theory of morals, as developed in the West, provides a powerful case and clear directions (in the form of political platforms like Social Justice) for 'faring well'.

In addition, modern economic theories and techniques have made it possible to reliably measure the extent to which the people are 'faring well' and to make the right choice of policies for the welfare of the people. So, it is extremely important for governments to concentrate on economic policies.

But, there is also a third lesson here. That is, the repeated occurrence of convincing the doubter through some wild-card entry, like the Vishwaroopa, in Indian philosophical arguments is quite detrimental in the long run. The student of Indian philosophy can not verify the arguments in the Bhagavad Gita or those in the later philosophical developments like Advaitha-Visishtadvaitha through empirical means -- how is he to re-enact the conversation with the supreme being, or to verify the existence of the soul? Also, being enamored with the transcendental clarity of the Bhagavad Gita, the Indian scholar did not venture into exploring the natural world for nearly two thousand years. This is the price paid for the lack of logical rigor and a disregard for rationalism in Indian philosophical arguments, something the Western philosophical tradition has managed to avoid through Aristotle's rigorous development of the concept of logic and his emphasis on empirical verification.






J. Robert Oppenheimer, the leader of the American team that developed the ultimate ‘weapon of mass destruction’ during the Second World War, was moved to quote Krishna’s words (‘I am become death, the destroyer of worlds’) as he watched, on 16 July 1945, the awesome force of the first nuclear explosion devised by man.

Comment 12: Oppenheimer might as well have quoted from Revelations 22:13 of the Holy Bible, ‘I am the alpha and the omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end’. Historically, India hasn’t really seen the grand scale of war and destruction that the West has repeatedly seen, whether it is for building empires or as a clash of civilizations. So we don’t really know what it is to be put in a situation where one has to make critical choices between scarce resources, among immediate and pressing needs, while great destruction is being wrought all around. That is why, it is wise to accept that the theological treatment of death and destruction in the Bhagavad Gita is a second-hand, re-hashed one. Indian philosophy is not good with explaining death, definitely not in the profound way that the foundations of the Western civilization could be re-organized in modern times around concepts like death wish (along with id, ego and super ego) by Sigmund Freud, or creative destruction by Joseph Schumpeter. On the other hand, Indian philosophy is good in preserving what one already has and in extending the non-violent, positive life force that people experience in their daily lives (e.g. ahimsa, nirvana, yoga, ayurveda). In fact, the ability to control one’s anger and maintain calm is seen as a necessary step towards achieving knowledge and wisdom in India, in contrast to the stereotype of the restless genius which is quite prevalent in Western culture.






Like the advice that Arjuna had received about his duty as a warrior fighting for a just cause, Oppenheimer the physicist could well find justification in his technical commitment to develop a bomb for what was clearly the right side.

Comment 13: It is more instructive to, instead, try to understand why many physicists, chemists and mathematicians in the mid-20th century were frequently led to reading the Bhagavad Gita. If the sole reason was that the Bhagavad Gita discussed finding motivation to fight a nuclear war and to do one’s duty amidst all-around destruction, then it would have found an equally good reception amidst military generals. But, it did not. So, it seems reasonable that it was admired among the scientists for other reasons as well. What are they? It would be interesting to conduct a thorough study in this direction.

Scrutinizing – indeed criticizing – his own actions, Oppenheimer said later on: ‘When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success.’

Comment 14: May be I am wrong here. But Oppenheimer’s comment seems to be about the modern scientific research environment where the scientist is looking for instant gratification through technical discoveries, but the scale of operation is so small at any given moment, that there is hardly any room for moral concerns until later. Even when that later time of reckoning arrives, one is only required to argue one’s case with one’s peers who are seated in a committee or one only sends in a grant proposal. One does not really go through any process of personal soul searching about the potential destruction caused by one’s discoveries and developments. In particular, Oppenheimer might not be criticizing himself in these comments.






Despite that compulsion to ‘fare forward’, there was reason also for reflecting on Arjuna’s concerns: How can good come from killing so many people? And why should I seek victory, kingdom or happiness for my own side?

Comment 15: If Professor Sen’s aim in quoting the Bhagavad Gita as an example in this essay is to emphasize, in the cause of heterodoxy, that the defeated argument for faring well is actually the more sound one, then he is definitely correct in his approach. In fact, the direction the ‘debate’ proceeds in the Gita is a dangerous and irresponsible one, especially in this age of terrorism. Professor Sen definitely succeeds here in showing that the healthy respect shown for a dissenting, defeated view in the argumentative tradition would prevent young people taking to violent causes in favor, supposedly, of the victorious, majority view. Thus the Gita example shows how the argumentative tradition discourages sectarian violence and terrorism. However, there are many ills of today’s society that are not so strikingly and starkly presented as the pre-war scene was to Arjuna. Environmental degradation, AIDS and malarial diseases, political corruption, sexual exploitation, domestic violence, smoking and alcoholism are some examples of silent, small-scale evils at the individual level that add up to enormous proportions at the level of society over time. These evils are working in a more subtle manner than terrorism or communal violence. It would have been good to see Professor Sen give examples for illustrating how the significance of the dialogue in the argumentative tradition helps to deal with these silent evils.

These arguments remain thoroughly relevant in the contemporary world.

Comment 16: No, they don’t. Today, India is so disorganized and chaotic not because millions of Arjunas are moved to inaction due to profound doubts about doing their duty in the wake of moral compunctions. Rather, it is because abstract concepts like the state, health, environment, property, education, justice, family and neighborhood are still only intuitively understood by the average Indian. We haven’t had a really serious age of enlightenment since the compilation of the Bhagavad Gita! If anything, Indian scholarship needs to first understand these concepts better. Hopefully, then more natural arguments would emerge that bear scientific validity and address every day concerns more directly.

The case for doing what one sees as one’s duty must be strong, but how can we be indifferent to the consequences that may follow from our doing what we take to be our just duty?

Comment 17: As such, this question is only relevant today for the extremists in India, both Hindu and Islamic, who take to violence as a just cause. The ordinary Indian is not bothered so much by any call of duty. Now, the extremists too do not have any clear conception of duty. They are simply looking to give vent to their barbaric instincts.






As we reflect on the manifest problem of the global world (from terrorism, wars and violence to epidemics, insecurity and grueling poverty), or on India’s special concerns (such as economic development, nuclear confrontation or regional peace), it is important to take on board Arjuna’s consequential analysis, in addition to considering Krishna’s arguments for doing one’s duty.

Comment 18: India has not been particularly good at this. Clear and incisive consequential analysis that prevents unfavorable results for the nation died with Chanakya. India’s inability to keep up with developments in the rest of the world has been exposed repeatedly throughout our history, rather brutally, through invasions and occupations. However, its long tradition of scholarship and respect for knowledge, combined with non-violence and friendliness, is now finally coming to pay off hugely. Moreover, the success of Indian democracy has ensured that catastrophic consequences of government policies are quickly mitigated (e.g. Indira Gandhi’s emergency, Sanjay Gandhi’s forced vasectomies, and the 2002 sectarian violence in Gujarat. The last example has not been fully corrected since the state government is still occupied by the same party in question).

The univocal ‘message of the Gita’ requires supplementation by the broader argumentative wisdom of the Mahabharata, of which the Gita is only one small part.

Comment 19: No, again. The broader argumentative wisdom of the Mahabharata mainly concerns an inter-clan war. Is it really relevant for the India of the 21st century? What we need to do is to focus on more authentic, scholarly documents, like the four Vedas, which can withstand scientific scrutiny. If anything, an anthropological study comparing the Vedas and the ancient religions of Egypt, Greece, Babylon and Persia would give clear and definite authenticity to the Vedas. The Bhagavad Gita can be taken as an authoritative commentary on the Vedas, but it cannot be taken as the be-all and the end-all reference to Hinduism, the way it has been done by Westerners so far. Perhaps, Westerners have got such an attitude about the Gita from the adherence of the Judeo-Christian religions, these being the religions they are usually brought up with, to the Holy Bible and the Old Testament as the main documentary references for their faith.

We need to figure out how the inclusive wisdom and the scientific temperament exhibited in the Vedas can be combined with (i) later religious influences like Budhism, Jainism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism and other religions, (ii) later scientific advancements like Calculus, Computers, Medicine, Engineering and Biology, (iii) later humanistic influences like music, arts, architecture, the English language, Urdu poetry and regional literature, (iv) later administrative and political institutions like those of the British and the Mughals, (v) later intellectual developments like the state, empire, university, civilization, globalization, and various other aspects of one’s identity. What Indian culture also needs is a healthy dose of experimentation and empirical research, especially to overcome an age-old ignorance of biological concerns like personal health, cleanliness and sports. It is obvious that such a great intellectual advancement is not happening anytime in the next one hundred years. But, it is certainly good to have a go at it, in a non-violent, civil manner. And this seems to be the right direction for India to proceed.

On another note, a unifying message is not bad, by itself. It may be a natural, anthropological process for humans to find issues in common with other people. Hence, a modern outlook for unity and diversity in India emulating the natural unity and diversity observed in the biological world is a more robust framework, than ad-hoc policies on unity and diversity based on the political theories of the day.

There will be an opportunity in this essay, and in the others to follow, to examine the reach and significance of many of the debates and altercations that have figured prominently in the Indian argumentative tradition. We have to take note not only of the opinions that won – or allegedly won – in the debates, but also of the other points of view that were presented and are recorded or remembered. A defeated argument that refuses to be obliterated can remain very alive.

Comment 20: The argumentative tradition does keep alive all sides of a debate, in contrast to the clash of civilizations approach which is not quite relevant to the Indian context. However, one must note the following points on the argumentative tradition which were already raised in the previous comments: (i) lack of logical rigor and crudeness of arguments in Indian literature, (ii) lack of training among the general public to appreciate rhetorical nuances in public reasoning, (iii) danger of disenfranchisement of people who have a silent disposition, (iv) too much heterodoxy without the benefit of unifying principles leads to post-modern disillusionment. Science develops as much due to individual creativity as it does due to engaging debates. So, doing one’s work quietly is equally important as arguing one’s point with others.



[1] As a high-school student, when I asked my Sanskrit teacher whether it would be permissible to say that the divine Krishna got away with an incomplete and unconvincing argument, he replied: ‘Maybe you could say that, but you must say it with adequate respect.’ I have presented elsewhere a critique – I hope with adequate respect – of Krishna’s deontology, along with a defence of Arjuna’s consequential perspective, in ‘Consequential Evaluation and Practical Reason’, Journal of Philosophy 97 (Sept. 2000).

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