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Intellectual India: Reason, Identity, Dissent

Jonardon Ganeri

New Literary History, Volume 40, Number 2, Spring 2009, pp.

247-263 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: 10.1353/nlh.0.0088

For additional information about this article

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New Literary History, 2009, 40: 247263

Intellectual India: Reason, Identity, Dissent

Jonardon Ganeri

Amartya Sen and the Reach o Reason

India has a long and multifaceted history o argumentation and

public reasoning. In his magnicent book The Argumentative Indian:Writings on Indian Culture, History and Identity,1 Amartya Sen provides

this history with a global context. Public reasoning is undamental toboth democratic politics and secular constitutional arrangements, andit is no accident that India, with its extensive traditions o toleranceand the admission o dissenting voices in public discourse, should havedeep democratic and secular instincts. This is something, Sen suggests,

which more narrowly sectarian understandings o India have lost sighto, and he recommends that we keep in mind gures such as the Indian

emperors Ashoka and Akbar, both o whom strongly encouraged publicdebate and respect or heterodox voices, and also Indian skeptics likethe atheist Javali, so vividly depicted in the Ramaya .na. Sen insists thatsuch individuals are as much the precursors o a modern Indian identityas any other gure drawn rom Indian history. Thus, public reasoningis central to democracy . . . parts o the global roots o democracy canindeed be traced to the tradition o public discussion that received muchencouragement in both India and China (and also Japan, Korea andelsewhere), rom the dialogic commitment o Buddhist organization(182), and it is thereore a mistake to think o democracy and secular-ism as Western values which India has embraced. The demonstrablyglobal origin o traditions o public reasoning undermines any thoughtthat the West has a distinctive claim upon liberal values, but also, just asimportantly, it undercuts arguments that there are things called Asian

values which are antithetical to ideas o democracy, secularism, and hu-man rights (13437). There are no cultural boundaries in the reach oreason or in the availability o values like tolerance and liberty (280).

Another central idea or Sen is that reason is beore identity, thateach o us is ree to reason about what is o value and signicance tous in whatever situations we nd ourselves, that neither religion norcommunity nor tradition imposes upon us an identity xed in advance.There is a relationship between agency and reedom, and a contrast

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new literary history248

between agency and well-being, a ull sense o agency involving not onlycontrol over decisions but also the reedom to question established

values and traditional priorities (240), including the reedom to decide

that religious or communitarian aliations are o less signicance thanones literary, political, or intellectual commitments: We have choiceover what signicance to attach to our dierent identities. There is noescape rom reasoning just because the notion o identity has been in-

voked (352). So reasoning has center stage both in shaping individualidentities and in deliberating about public goods. And in seeking to givestructure and substance to those deliberations, the whole o Indias pastis available, a past that has been deeply international and prooundlyinterreligious. Sen nds in Rabindranath Tagores assertion that the

idea o India itsel militates against the intense consciousness o theseparateness o ones own people rom others two thoughts in tandem,one that opposes the idea o India as a mere ederation o separate andalienated religious communities, the other opposing an isolationist con-ception o India in the world (349). In the global circulation o ideas,India has always been a major player, and the combination o internalpluralism and external receptivity has ashioned or India a spaciousand assimilative Indian identity (346).

Though rightly emphasizing Indias argumentative traditions and his-

torical accommodation o dissenting voices, the lack o detail in Sensdescription o those traditions is striking. There is in Sens work littlemention o any actual analyses o public reasoning in India, no reerence,or example, to seminal works on dialectic and argumentation such asthe Kathavatthu, the Nyayasutra, or the Vadavinoda. Still less is there anysignicant description o the resources o practical reason in Indiasintellectual past, or o the ways identities are understood as ashionedand not ound. Sens understanding o the reach o reason, o theutility o critical public discussion, and o rationality in human psychol-

ogy, hardly makes reerence to Indias long tradition o thought aboutthese topics. This is puzzling. It is as i the mere act o this tradition oargumentation is sucient or Sen, that the substance o that traditionis irrelevant. Or else it is as i Sen presumes a priori that the substancemust coincide in all important respects with the concept as it eaturesin contemporary work on political and social theory. In short, while Senspeaks reely about exemplarypoliticalgures like Ashoka and Akbar, heis largely silent on the intellectualgures who have provided India with itstheoretical resources and sel-understandings. Sen observes with decisive

clarity how a alse contrast between the intellectual traditions o Indiaand the West is brought about by the biases in the respective historiesthat are told, that [i]n comparing Western thoughts and creations withthose in India, the appropriate counterpoints o Aristotelian or Stoic

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249intellectual india

or Euclidian analyses are not the traditional belies o the Indian ruralmasses or o the local wise men but the comparably analytical writingso, say, Kau.tilya or Nagarjuna or Aryabha.ta. Socrates meets the Indian

peasant is not a good way to contrast the respective intellectual tradi-tions (158). What I nd astonishing, though, is that this is the onlytime Sen mentions Nagarjuna in the whole book, and o the many greatIndian intellectuals who have thought so long and so hard about reason,theoretical, practical, and public, Nagarjuna is lucky in getting a mentionat all (no Nyaya philosophy is mentioned, or example, and the termNyaya is not even in the index). Prooundly aware o the pitalls, Senseems nevertheless to all into them.

Misleading impressions aside, the danger here is that liberal secular-

ism is made to win too easily. The mere suggestion that one shouldreason more and better might seem to ail to engage at anything otherthan an abstract admonitory level; it might sound more like enthusiasmthan practical advice. This is the deeper worry that motivates attackson the Enlightenments appeal to reason, a more serious worry thansimply that reason has so oten been abused or totalitarian ends. Whata proper response to that worry requires is a detailed engagement withthe resources o reason in India as they are actually in play or can bebrought into play.

The cause o Sens silence is, I think, that his primary interest is inprovisions o the secular state itsel and not in what it is to be a participant

within it. A secular state tries to work out how to structure its policies andinstitutions in such a way that there is symmetry in the states dealings

with any particular group, religion, class, or individual. The appropriatemodel o reason here is the one that Rawls seeks to capture with his useo the term public reason. Public reason is the mode o deliberationthat brings people o diverse philosophical, religious, and moral convic-tions into a state o rational accord with respect to a matter o mutual

concern and common interest. In a pluralistic community tolerant odierence, it is essential that the resources, reach, and requirements opublic reason be properly understood, and no such understanding isacceptable that gives discriminate advantage to the particular view oany one o the parties in the deliberation. For a straightorward i overlysimple example o the workings o public reason, consider the ollowingaccount o the process leading to the preparation o a common com-muniqu at a recent meeting o the G8 industrialized countries: Actingunder the policy parameters set by their political masters . . . the job

[o the negotiating ocials or sherpas] is to move words and phrases inand out o square brackets. I a phrase stays in square brackets, it is notagreed. I it comes out o brackets, consensus is reached.2

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But the view rom the side o the institutions and the state is blind tothe question that is most pressing or the participants themselves. Thatis the question o how a specic individual, whose access to resources o

reason has a particular shape and character, nds within those resourcesthe materials to engage in public and practical acts o reason. How, orexample, does such an individual nd their way to a conception o delib-erative thinking about the public good? How do they orm a conceptiono thinking about other participants in the public space or whom theresources o reason are dierent?

It is important, certainly, to point out, as Sen does, that Hinduismcontains within itsel many dissenting voices and heterodox opinions;but the dicult question is to understand how those dissenters, no less

than the mainstream, made sense o their dissent. One needs to showhow Hinduism has within itsel models o rational deliberation thatmake possible the dissenting voices and internal critiques and how thosemodels also make available to Hindus a conception o what it is to rea-son about the public good. An analogous exercise needs to be repeatedor each o the participants in a secular state; only in this way can eachreach an understanding o what Rawls has appropriately described asthe overlapping consensus in which each group,or its own reasons andon the basis o its own resources o reason, makes sense o and agrees to a

common position or policy. The exercise can be seen happening withinIslam through a contemporary revival o the practice o ijtihad(reason-ing and interpretation based on the sacred texts).3 Space or such anapproach depends in part on the identication o a neutral secularism,that is, a secularism which demands that politics and the aairs o stateare unbiased or symmetric in respect o dierent religions (313), incontrast with an understanding o secularism that sees it as requiringthe prohibition o any religious association in public or state activities(19). Prohibitory secularism requires the resources o reason to be wholly

disenchanted in public, even those upon which individuals draw. Neutralsecularism imposes this requirement only on state invocations o publicreason; its requirement on individuals is that their appeal to private re-sources or reason does not bias them in avor o their own resources orlead to an asymmetry in their reasoned dealings with others. (A Buddhistanalysis o debate rom the time o Ashoka, the Kathavatthu, providesan astonishingly subtle theorization o this idea o biaslessness in publicreasoning.) The background worry is, o course, that in developing theresources o reason withinHinduism, Islam, or Buddhism, we are in some

way making reason subordinate to tradition and religious command.Sen reads Akbar as resisting that threat with a strong insistence on theautonomy o reason (274). My argument is that we can respect the needor autonomy without restricting reasons resources to those merely oallegedly value-ree disciplines such as rational choice theory.

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disposal, something that can shape the nature o his or her participa-tion in public debate. It is by acquainting ourselves with such detailthat we get a true sense o the India large o which Sen so admirably

speaks. And Sen is surely right in his diagnosis o the cause o what hecalls the extraordinary neglect o Indian works on reasoning, science,mathematics and other so-called Western spheres o success (80) in thecomprehensive denial o Indian intellectual originality that one sees inthe appalling colonial writings o James Mill and others (more precisely,in the twin eects o the magisterial and the exoticist approaches toIndia; 15455, 160). The eects o this systematic deprecation are stillto be seen in the reluctance o many scholars today to take seriously theintellectual substanceo the Indian texts. Sen is right too when he speaks o

the need or a corrective regarding Indian traditions in public reasoningand tolerant communication, and more generally what can be called theprecursors o democratic practice (80). The recovery o bits o theorysuch as the one I have briefy sketched (and it was, o course, developedto a much greater deal o sophistication than I have revealed) is the wayto make good that necessity. Fragments o theory like this one, thoughpresented in the texts as abstracted rom any concrete context, weremost certainly the product o engagement with the day-to-day businesso reasoning publicly about matters o common interest with others who

did not share ones views.I have said that intellectuals like Gandhi and Tagore were most certainly

aware o the India large, ull o resources or reason. Sen observes howTagore was resistant to anything that seemed to smack o the applica-tion o mechanical ormula, that [t]he question he persistently asks is

whether we have reason enough to want what is being proposed, tak-ing everything into account (119). At least two resources rom Indiasintellectual past are available to support such a question. One is theprolonged debate in the Mahabharata over the rights and wrongs o

a lie, uttered by Yudhi.s.thira in a moment o crisis. There are anticipa-tions in this discussion o the problem that was to vex Kant, whetherit is right to lie to the malicious pursuers o an innocent person. Theother, perhaps even more interesting, is the strong vein o particularistmoral reasoning ound in the highly intellectual Mma .msa school. TheMma .msa theoreticians develop an account o practical reasoning thatis situational and adaptive, driven by particular cases, and extremely

versatile. This, again, is a resource o great value or any argumenta-tive Indian. Indeed, it is through the imaginative exploitation o such

models that dissenters and skeptics nd the resources o reason withwhich to develop their critique.

Pointing to the brute existence o skeptical voices like that o Javali isonly the beginning o the story. What we really need to know is how a

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skeptic like Javali adapted and manipulated the tools o justication andargument at his disposal so as to make possible his dissent. I nothingelse, that would be a step toward understanding how heterodox voices

might similarly empower themselves in global public discourse today.In Sens observation o the way one sees the colonial metropolis sup-plying ideas and ammunition to post-colonial intellectuals to attack theinfuence o the colonial metropolis (133), we see an expression o thetypical skeptics maneuver. Again, the general pattern o such a move

would be amiliar to an Indian intellectual with access to the materi-als or reasoned thought that an expansive conception o India makesavailable. For precisely such strategies have been put into practice byskeptical critics o orthodox Hinduism, voices that include the Buddhist

Nagarjuna, the reethinking critic Jayarasi, and the dissenting VedantinSrhar.sa (all o whom, it must be said, achieve a ar greater degree osophistication and methodological sel-awareness than does Javali). Theinfuence o their criticism derives precisely rom its using the veryresources o reason used by its target. For while reasoned humanityshould certainly be open to sound criticism rom any quarter, it is aact o human nature that it is much harder to be receptive to criticismormulated by outsiders in outside terms than to criticism made rom

within ones own terms. The reason or this is that rational criticism is

eective and not merely enthusiastic when it has the potential to becomesel-criticism. This averts what would otherwise be a distant call upon thesovereignty o reason.

For reason to be eective, it must be engaged. And it must be admittedthat charged or dicult situations create impediments to the engagemento reason. Acknowledging human railty ought not, however, to lead usto think that it is better simply to all back on our moral instincts, suchas our instincts to respond to others with respect and sympathy. Dicultas it is, reason needs to be engaged in at least the ollowing areas: i) in

publically scrutinizing policies whose unintended but injurious eectsare all too easy or policymakers to ignore (such as amine); ii) in refect-ing on our values and priorities in the course o ashioning an identity;iii) in questioning the appropriateness o our emotional reactions; iv)in order to transcend ideology and blind belie; v) to cultivate ourmoral sentiments themselves and revise our rst perceptions (27581).That leaves us to address the issue introduced by the rhetoric o coloni-alism, made salient in the work o cultural anthropologists; and kept incirculation by the politics o a clash o civilizations: The question that

has to be aced here is whether such exercises o reasoning may requirevalues that are not available in some cultures (282), in particular thevalues o liberalismtolerance, mutual respect, the dignity o humanity,rights, justice. Sens answer is simply that there are no cultural barriers

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and a justication o the assent worthiness o the Vedic pronouncementsis sought in a general epistemology o testimony.

I have suggested that there are as many concepts o reason in India

as there are calendars. An important contrast within orthodox Hindu-ism is refected in the use o the terms hetu, evidence-based rational-ity, and tarka, hypothesis-based rationality. Manu, the author o themost infuential o the law books, is disappointingly unequivocal in hiscriticism o the unconstrained use o evidence-based reason, but he isconsiderably more willing to allow hypothesis-based rationality (Manu).9

A careul examination o the resources o such rationality reveals thatthere is an underlying model o considerable fexibility and power. Thismodel o rationality is based on two sorts o principles: i) principles or

the selection o paradigmatic cases or exemplars, and ii) principles orthe mapping o truths about the paradigms onto truths about othercases, based on rules o adaptation and substitution. One might imaginehow one reasons when one is trying to change the battery o a new car,a process that involves remembering the procedure that worked on theold car and adapting it to t the dierent layout and design o the newone. Clearly this blueprint + adaptation model is situational and par-ticularist. I believe that it came to serve as the basis o a general theoryo moral reasoning, leaving behind its origins in Vedic hermeneutics.

And, as many texts make clear, it makes possible the existence o dis-sent and disagreement, or dierent decisions about what counts as anappropriate adaptation, and also what counts as a relevant paradigm,can always be advanced and deended. As a resource to be drawn uponin reasoning about ones choices, the model is a highly versatile one.The details o this theory are ound in works on Dharmasastra andMma .msa, especially in commentaries on the Manus.mrtiand in KumarilasTantravarttika.

Public reasoning under a secular constitution demands a ramework

which is symmetrical or unbiased in its accommodation o a pluralityo standpoints. Jaina and Buddhist dialecticians have done importanttheoretical work here. The tolerance o diversity o the third centuryBCE Buddhist emperor Ashoka is well known, and the council he con-

vened with the purpose o settling doctrine disputes between dierentBuddhist groups was run according to a codied theory o impartialdebate. Debate is so structured as to give each party a air and equalopportunity to rehearse their arguments and or counterarguments tobe presented. Guiding the entire debate is an endeavor, not to nd a

winner and a loser, but to tease out the hidden assumptions that maylie in the background o some given position, so that there can be aclarication o what is at stake and what each party is committed to.The policy o making debates have the clarication o commitments

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as their unction, rather than conrontation and victory or deeat, hasimportant advantages. One is that it is easier to concede, i one comesto see that ones position rests on hidden commitments that one would

not endorse. There can be progress in public reasoning without therehaving to be winners and losers. The text which Ashokas dialectiansproduced is called the Kathavatthu.10

I neutrality is one requirement o public reasoning, another is thatthere be common ground. Indian theoreticians describe this sharedground as the d.r.stanta or udahara.na; I will call it the anchor in adebate. Anchors are what ensure that acts o public reasoning engage

with the participants, that what is disputed and what is implied are tiedto their rames o reerence. At one level, this is simply a refection o

the blueprint + adaptation model o decision making, shited romthe domain o individual practical reasoning to the domain o publicconsensus-seeking reasoning (rom svarthatoparartha, in the terminologyo the Indian theorists). Any given case that is to serve as the startingpoint in a public discussion must be such that its relevant eatures areagreed upon by all participants to the dialogue; otherwise, the act opublic reasoning will not even get o the ground. So the existence oanchors is a requirement in an act o public reasoning. It is possible todevelop an account o anchoring rom ideas described in the ancient

Ritual Sutras as well as in early Nyaya sources.I have been arguing that the ull range o resources rom intellectual

India is available in the ashioning o modern Indian identities. J. L.Mehta has said about one such resource, the Rig Veda, that: We inIndia still stand within thatWirkungsgeschichteand what we make o thattext and how we understand it today will itsel be a happening withinthat history.11 I think we should generalize what Mehta says to includeall the texts and traditions o India and to broker Indian identities inthe global diaspora as well as in India itsel.

India and the World: Globalizationin the Seventeenth Century

India in the seventeenth century, the century ater Akbar, was a placeo great intellectual excitement. Muslim, Hindu, and Jaina intellectualsproduced work o tremendous interest, ideas circulated around India,through the Persianate and Arabic worlds, and also between India and

Europe. I ever there were a concrete embodiment o the open andspacious idea o India to which Tagore gave voice, it was here. Letme illustrate my point by ocussing on a single year: 1656. In India, this

was the year in which a long running process o religious isomorphism,

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pioneered by Akbars minister Abul Fazl and orchestrated around Ibnal Arabis idea o Unity in Being (wa.hdat al-wujud), reached ullmentin Dara Shukohs grand project to translate ty-two Upanishads into

Persian, a project or the sake o which he assembled in Varanasi a largeteam o bilingual scholars. Dara believed that he could establish that thedierences between Hinduism and Islam were largely terminological, andeven that the Upanishads could be read as a sort o commentary uponthe Quran. 1656 would also be the year in which the French philosopherand physician Franois Bernier would leave behind him the France oles libertins rudits, on a journey that would bring him soon to MughalIndia. The leading disciple o the great empiricist Pierre Gassendi, it wasBernier who would eventually, on his return to France, make Gassendis

work available to French and British audiences. Beore doing so, how-ever, he was to spend years as the court physician rst o Dara Shukohand then o Aurangzeb, spending his spare time translating the works oGassendi and Descartes into Persian, and discussing philosophical ideasat his home with the by now redundant members o Dara Shukohs teamo pandits, as well as with his scientically minded patron DanishmandKhan. To any one o them, Gassendis empiricist atomism would haveresounded a amiliar Vaise.ska tone. Coincidentally, no doubt, this was tobe the time when three o Varanasis leading Navya Nyaya philosophers

would compose brilliant and original Vaise.sika works: MadhavadevasNyayasara, Raghudevas Dravyas arasa.mgraha, and most particularly

Jayarama Nyayapacananas Padarthamala, a work completed in 1659.All three were also signatories to a 1657 letter o public declaration(nir.nayapatra) by a large group o Varanasi Sanskrit scholars, an histori-cally important act o public reason in its own right.

I Europe had not yet been awoken to Gassendis empiricist alterna-tive to Cartesian rationalism, 1656 was nevertheless to be a signicant

year there too, or it was the year in which Spinoza received his cherem

in Amsterdam, an excommunication rom the Portuguese Jewish com-munity as a result o some anticipation o the heretical views he wouldlater systematize; the pantheistic/atheistic doctrine that God or Natureis the only substance, the denial o miracles, o prophecy, and o scripturalrevelation. While China was perceived by Pierre Bayle and Nicolas Mal-ebranche to be a land inhabited by Spinozists, it would all to AbrahamHyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron, while introducing his translation o DaraShukohs Persian Upanishads into Latin, to declare that the Upanishadsindeed represented a creed o true Spinozism.12

Bernier himsel reported on the infuence o the Unity o Beingidea that had underpinned Dara Shikohs project, which, he says, haslatterly made great noise in Hindoustan, inasmuch as certain PendetsorGentile Doctorshad instilled it into the minds oDaraand Sultan Sujah,

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the elder sons oChah-Jehan.13 Claiming that this same doctrine can beound in Plato and in Aristotle, and that it is almost universally held bythe Gentile Pendets o India, he adds that this was also the opinion

o [Robert] Flud[d,] whom our great Gassendy has so ably reuted.

14

(Fludd drew on Neoplatonist resources in a search or hidden connec-tions between a purely intelligible realm and the realm o sensation.)Bernier describes the idea in question as being that

God . . . has not only produced lie rom his own substance, but also generallyeverything material or corporeal in the universe, and that this production isnot ormed simply ater the manner o ecient causes, but as a spider whichproduces a web rom its own navel, and withdraws it at pleasure. The Creationthen, say these visionary doctors, is nothing more than an extraction or exten-

sion o the individual substance oGod, o those laments which He draws romhis own bowels; and, in like manner, destruction is merely the recalling o thatdivine substance and laments into Himsel.15

Bernier concludes that this idea has led him to take as his motto theslogan that There are no opinions too extravagant and ridiculous tond reception in the mind o man.16 No reader o David Humes Dia-logues Concerning Natural Religionwill ail to identiy either the image othe spider or the slogan with which Bernier concludes. It is as likely that

Hume read Bernier directly as that he received the simile rom Bernierscorrespondent Pierre Bayle, whose Historical and Critical Dictionarywaspublished in French in 1697 and includes inormation rom ancient Greeksources about the Indian Brahmins as well as rom contemporary travel-lers accounts. While it was certainly rhetorically convenient and eectiveor Hume to ridicule the notion in its Indian ormulation, his attack onthe rationalistic explanation o the unity o the world brought the careero that widely admired cosmopolitan idea decisively to an end.

To illustrate the importance o these relationships, it is perhaps worthstressing just how well connected Bernier was with the circles that ash-ioned the early Enlightenment in Europe, the libertins ruditsand thenouveaux pyrrhoniens, and how quickly ideas circulated between Indiaand Europe. Among his correspondents, or example, was the promi-nent new skeptic, Franois de La Mothe Le Vayer; and i John Drydenhad already penned his playAureng-Zebein 1675, this was only becauseBerniers Travelshad by then been translated into English by the rstSecretary o the Royal Society, Henry Ouldinburgh. With Gassendis

work translated into Persian even beore it was available in French, andthe monistic pantheism o the Upanishads and Dara Shukoh already inFrance and England years beore Spinozas Ethicswere published, whatmore dramatic evidence could there be o the rapid global circulationo ideas in the 1660s and 70s?

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Some years beore, Dara Shukoh sat next to Shah Jahan as they re-ceived a deputation by the Varanasi poet Kavndracarya Sarasvati, whohad come to argue that a tax on Hindu pilgrimage to Varanasi and

other pilgrimage sites be repealed. He engaged them in philosophicalconversation and indeed described to them the contents oSa.nkarasBrahmasutrabha.sya. When he returned triumphant, the speeches in hishonor were led by the Navya Nyaya scholar Jayarama Nyayapacanana,a senior public intellectual o the period and someone whose studentsreceived the support and encouragement o Kavindra. Himsel the studento the great Navadvpa scholar Ramabhadra Sarvabhauma, Jayarama hadimpeccable credentials in Navya Nyaya. He and his school o philosophymight be said to represent to the intellectual world o early modern

India what Gassendi and Mersenne did to early Enlightement Europe.Indeed, just as Gassendi sought to reintroduce the empiricist atomism oEpicurus through a colossal Latin commentary on the Epicurean texts,the Syntagma Philosophicum, so Jayarama would be the rst person inmany centuries to write a commentary upon the early Vaise.sik sources,his Siddhantamala. In his discussion and deence o atomism, Jayaramareers intriguingly to a group he calls the new skeptics (navyanastika.h);I have yet to determine exactly who he had in mind.

This is the point at which to say something about Yasovijaya Ga .ni, by

ar the most brilliant and productive Jaina intellectual o the seventeenthcentury. The tolerant pluralism o the Jainas had attracted Akbar, but

Yasovijayas story holds a particular interest because he provides a linkbetween the two traditions o thinking I have been describing, the theisticmonism o the Upanishads, Dara Shikoh and Ibn alArabi on the onehand, and the empiricist atomism o the new Vaise.sikas on the other.

Yasovijaya spent an extended apprenticeship studying Navya Nyaya inVaranasi, his stay coming to an end shortly beore Daras translationalproject began. Yasovijaya himsel, ater a period writing Jaina philosophi-

cal treatises using the techniques and methods o Navya Nyaya, thenswitched to writing works o a more spiritual orientation, several dealing

with concepts o the sel. Both Dara and Yasovijaya would appeal to thevenerable metaphor o the ocean and its waves to explain the relation-ship between apparent multiplicity and underlying unity they sought toarticulate in their common quest or an interdoctrinal rapprochement.In Yasovijayas case, however, the uniying conception is more like thato a shattered mirror, in which each ragment refects some part oraspect o the refected object, a representation o which is to be built

up by reconstructing all the partial images; while or Dara it is as imultiple images o some one thing, some clearer and some indistinct,are refected in the suraces o parallel acing mirrors. In the later worko Yasovijaya, there is, I would suggest, a clear expression o a range o

values associated nowadays with political liberalism.

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It is clear that there was a good deal o movement between Varanasi andNavadvpa (in Bengal) at this time; indeed Raghudevas scribe MahadevaPu .nta .mkara tells us that he made a number o trips himsel in order to

study with the Navya Nyaya pandits there. One person to make at leastpart o that journey was the Englishman John Marshall. Marshall wasa riend o the Cambridge Platonist Henry More, to whom indeed heentrusted his literary remains. He ound work with the East India Com-pany and travelled between Hugli and Patna in the early 1670s, wherehe died in 1677. What makes him remarkable is his interest in Indianideas. Having learned Persian and Arabic, he prepared English transla-tions o two works, the Sama Veda rom Madhusudanas Persian, and theBhagavatapura .na. Two centuries later, E. B. Cowell would declare that

i Marshalls researches had been published in 1680, they would haveinaugurated an era in European knowledge o India, being in advance oanything which appeared beore 1800.17 In Marshalls diaries we nd himdrawing attention to the existence o the story o the Flood in the Hinduscriptures,18 presumably as it is ound in the Bhagavatapura .na itsel, thisover a century beore William Jones made comparative mythology intoa science. Marshall also knew o the Hindu conception o the world as acobweb emanating rom God,19 already mentioned by Bernier. Marshallsdescriptions are especially remarkable in being ree o the condescend-

ing tone o most later European writing rom India.

Conclusion

The idea o India is indeed an open, assimilative, and spacious one,sustaining a plurality o voices, orthodox and dissenting, o many ages,regions, and aliations. Modern Indian identities in the global diaspora,as much as in India itsel, can call upon all these voices and traditions,

re-thinkthem, adapt and modiy them, use the resources o reason theymake available in deliberation about who to be, how to behave, and on

what to agree. That is a undamental reedom, one which ought not tobe surrendered in binding onesel to narrower, constricted understand-ings o what India is.

University of Sussex

NOTES

1 Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity(New York: Picador, 2006) (hereater cited in text).2 Sherpas Call Tune or Political Masters, The Guardian, June 30, 2005.

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3 David Smock, Itjihad: Reinterpreting Islamic Principles or the Twenty-First Century,United States Institute o Peace, Special Report 125 (Aug. 2004), available online at http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr125.html.4 Gautama, Nyayas utra, ed. Anantalal Thakur (Delhi: Indian Council o Philosophical

Research, 1997) (hereater cited in text by book, chapter, and verse).5 Vauvenargues, Rfections et maximes, 400; quoted rom The Refections and Maxims oLuc de Clapiers, Marquis o Vauvenargues, trans. F. G. Stevens (London: Humphrey Milord,1927).6 Peter Strawson, Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (London: Methuen,1959), 11.7 Mauni, Short Stories, translated by Lakshmi Holmstrm (New Delhi: Katha, 1997), 48.See my What you are you do not see, what you see is your shadow: The PhilosophicalDouble in Maunis Fiction, in The Poetics o Shadow: The Double in Philosophy and Literature,ed. Andrew Ng Hock Soon (Hanover: Ibidem-Verlag, orthcoming).8 Mahabharata o Krishna-Dqaipayana Vyasa, trans. K. M. Ganguli, 3rd ed. (New Delhi:

Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1976), 8.69.4046.9 Manus Code o Law: A Critical Edition and Translation o the Manava-Dharmasastra, ed.Patrick Olivelle (New York: Oxord Univ. Press, 2005). For Manu on evidence-based reasonsee 2.1011; or hypothesis-based rationality see 12.106.10 Points o Controversy, or, Subjects o Discourse: Being a Translation o the Kathavatthu romthe Abhidhammapi.taka, ed. S. Z. Aung and C.A.F. Rhys Davids. Pali Text Society, TranslationSeries no. 5 (London: Luzac & Co., 1960).11 J. L. Mehta, The .Rgveda: Text and Interpretation, in Philosophy and Religion: Essaysin Interpretation(Delhi: ICPR, 1990), 278.12 M. Anquetil-Duperron, trans., Oupnekhat, id est, Secretum tegendum, translation o theUpanishads, vol. 2 (Paris: Levrault, 18012), 659, 665.13 Franois Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, A. D. 16561668, trans. Archibald Con-stable (1891; London: Humphrey Milord, Oxord Univ. Press, 1916), 345.14 Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, 34647.15 Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, 347.16 Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, 349.17 E. B. Cowell qtd. in John Marshalls entry in Biographical Register o Christs College15051905, and o the Earlier Foundation, Gods House, 14481505, ed. J. A. Venn (Cambridge:Cambridge Univ. Press, 19101913), 592.18 John Marshall in India: Notes and Observations in Bengal, 16681672 (London: OxordUniv. Press, 1927), 181.

19 John Marshall in India, 186.

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