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Amartya Sen, Home in the World

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Amartya Sen, Home in the World

By Omkar Goswami
August 11, 2021

Amartyada, says Omkar Goswami, thank you for being the humane, caring and socially concerned economist that you are.

All Illustrations: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com

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The Amartya Sen Lecture

'It is high time to jettison Amartya Sen'

Born in 1933, Amartya Sen is over 87 years old. At that age, most people of letters tend to relax and ruminate. Not Sen.

With COVID-19 having taken away his incessant travels and lecturing and battened him down at his house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Sen has written his memoir -- which is either his 30th or 31st book, a list that began with his PhD thesis, Choice of Techniques, published by Basil Blackwell in 1960.

This book consists of five parts -- comprising a combination of pure memoir with chapters on fundamental philosophical, political or economic issues.

Part One deals with Sen's early life, from childhood to his schooling at Santiniketan.

It is interspersed with three excellent non-memoir-like chapters on the rivers of undivided Bengal, on Tagore and his arguments especially with Gandhi, and on Sen's long association with Sanskrit that started under his grandfather's tutelage in Santiniketan.

I found his chapter on the company of grandparents particularly interesting, especially his close relationship with his maternal grandfather, the Sanskrit scholar, Kshiti Mohan Sen, whose classic, Hinduism, Sen translated from Bengali to English in 1961.

Part Two is thematic. It deals with the devastating Bengal Famine of 1943, the idea of Bangladesh, nationalist political resistance to British colonialism up to the division of India and Britain in India under the Raj.

Part Three returns to the autobiographical framework.

This is after Sen finished school at Santiniketan and moved on to do his BA at Presidency College, Calcutta in 1951.

Living at the YMCA hostel at Mechua Bazar, Sen came into his own -- not just in academics but in enjoying a sense of freedom and making many friends in the course of long addas at the Coffee House and elsewhere, covering every topic under the sun.

There is a great story in Chapter 12 that involves Sen, his college friend Sukhamoy Chakravarty, and Dasgupta's Bookshop which was the bibliophile's haunt.

Sukhamoy had borrowed Kenneth Arrow's classic, Social Choice and Individual Values and passed it on to Sen to read.

In it, Arrow set out his stunning 'Impossibility Theorem'. The question was this: Can individual choices of people be translated into a consistent social choice?

Arrow proved that with four extremely basic conditions that needed to be satisfied, one could not map individual preferences through any non-dictatorial social choice mechanism to yield consistent social decisions. Thus, the 'Impossibility Theorem'.

This discovery led to what I consider to be the greatest period of Sen's formal theoretical work which resulted in his masterpiece, Collective Choice and Social Welfare, published in 1970.

Part Three also deals with Sen's early battle with oral cancer.

In the summer of 1952, when he was not even 19 years old, Sen was treated at the Chittaranjan Cancer Hospital with seven days of gruelling, old-fashioned radium radiation and suffered incredible post-radiation pain; thankfully, the malignant tumour disappeared.

Thereafter, he underwent numerous treatments at the Radio Therapy Centre in Cambridge between 1953 and 1963.

Part Four, consisting of nine chapters, mostly deals with Sen's first ten years at Trinity College, Cambridge, first doing his second BA degree and then as a Prize Fellow and eventually as a lecturer and staff fellow.

After suffering some introductory sherry parties -- a drink he hates with a passion -- Sen went to meet his Gods, Piero Sraffa and Maurice Dobb.

Sraffa taught Sen various aspects of economics and the merits of ristretto.

'What was intended to be a two-year stay at Trinity for a rapidly earned BA degree... ended up being my first period of ten years there, from 1953 to 1963.'

Sen returned to Cambridge in 1998 as the Master of Trinity College, where he served for six years, and where he was when he received the Nobel Prize for economics.

Much of this section is about the deep friendships made -- such as Mahbub ul Haq of Pakistan, Lal Jayawardena from Sri Lanka, Michael Nicholson -- and Sen's interactions with Sraffa, Dobb and Joan Robinson; of Sen being elected as an Apostle, an exclusively “small intellectual aristocracy of Cambridge”; and his two-year stint in between as a professor at Jadavpur University so that he could complete the minimum number of years needed to submit his PhD thesis.

Part Five is short, consisting of two chapters: A philosophical one called 'Persuasion and Cooperation' and the other 'Near and Far', which deals with Sen's days as a professor at the Delhi School of Economics from 1963 to 1971.

After that he left to take up a professorship at the London School of Economics. The book abruptly ends there.

Which is a pity. Because between 1971 and now, he was at the LSE for six years; at Oxford for eleven; as the Master of Trinity for six; and at Harvard from 1987-88 and then from 2004 till date.

It was also when Sen's social, ethical and political conscience spoke out like never before. He had much to share about this highly productive period.

Let me end with a personal anecdote. Sen was my D Phil examiner at Oxford in 1982, and we communicated off and on in the pre-Internet days.

In 1989, while at Rutgers, I was re-reading his Poverty and Famines, which demonstrated that the Bengal Famine of 1943 was not on account of any food availability decline (FAD) but solely due to failure in exchange entitlements (FEE).

Looking at the same data that Sen had used, but treating these somewhat differently, I found that there was significant FAD and, hence, FEE.

So, I typed a draft and sent it to him for his critical comments.

Five days later he called back and said, 'I've gone through your paper carefully and checked all your calculations. You are right. Go ahead and publish it.' Such was, and is, the academic grace of the man.

Amartyada, thank you for being the humane, caring and socially concerned economist that you are. The profession is blessed for that.

Feature Presentation: Rajesh Alva/Rediff.com

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: A Memoir

Audible Audiobook – Unabridged
Amartya Sen (Author), & 2 more
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 684 ratings

Brought to you by Penguin.

The extraordinary early life in India and England of one of the world's leading public intellectuals.

Where is 'home'? For Amartya Sen home has been many places - Dhaka in modern Bangladesh, where he grew up; the village of Santiniketan, where he was raised by his grandparents as much as by his parents; Calcutta, where he first studied economics and was active in student movements and Trinity College, Cambridge, to which he came aged 19.

Sen brilliantly recreates the atmosphere in each of these. Central to his formation was the intellectually liberating school in Santiniketan founded by Rabindranath Tagore (who gave him his name Amartya) and enticing conversations in the famous Coffee House on College Street in Calcutta. As an undergraduate at Cambridge, he engaged with many of the leading figures of the day. This is a book of ideas - especially Marx, Keynes and Arrow - as much as of people and places.

In one memorable chapter, Sen evokes 'the rivers of Bengal' along which he travelled with his parents between Dhaka and their ancestral villages. The historic culture of Bengal is wonderfully explored, as is the political inflaming of Hindu-Muslim hostility and the resistance to it. In 1943, Sen witnessed the Bengal famine and its disastrous development. Some of Sen's family were imprisoned for their opposition to British rule: not surprisingly, the relationship between Britain and India is another main theme of the book.

Forty-five years after he first arrived at 'the Gates of Trinity', one of Britain's greatest intellectual foundations, Sen became its Master.

©2022 Amartya Sen (P)2022 Penguin Audio

Listening Length 16 hours and 45 minutes
Author Amartya Sen
Narrator Steven Crossley
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Audible.com.au Release Date 03 March 2022

Best Sellers Rank 38,648 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals)
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37 in Economic Theory (Audible Books & Originals)

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From the Publisher

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Review

Sen is so engaging, so full of charm and has such a clear gift for the graceful sentence. It's a wonderful book, the portrait of a citizen of the world ... full of its author's beguiling personality, elegance and wit of presentation, and joyous in its celebration of the life of the mind. -- Philip Hensher ― Spectator

Sen's sensibility still seems Tagorean. There is the same affinity for freedom and imagination, a similar commitment to the vulnerable and the downtrodden, but most of all a shared sense that we don't yet know all there is to know about the world. -- Abhrajyoti Chakraborty ― Guardian

The clarity of Sen's thought and the lucidity of his prose are delightful and entertaining but the lightness of his touch can often be deceptive because it sometimes conceals the depth and range of Sen's erudition, the intensity and the passion of his commitment to certain values and ideas and his relentless quest to bring together the home and the world. -- Rudrangshu Mukherjee ― The Wire India

a charming, immensely readable, and very enjoyable voyage through the making of a great mind ... we are just led with rare good humour and gentle wit through the formative years of his life ... This is a very accessible book, "fun" to use one of Sen's favourite words, written in beautifully constructed short sentences that explain the most profound observations with commendable brevity ... It is Sen's capacity to maintain a simple style while telling amusing stories or explaining complex issues (as he does occasionally) that is both unique and captivating ... This memoir is an unforgettable story of the evolution of a thinking and enquiring and all too human a mind, as also a tribute to one who has harnessed his abundant academic talent to the needs of the humblest and poorest -- Mani Shankar Aiyar ― Open the Magazine

Amartya Sen's Home in the World is really three books in one.

A sensitively written memoir of the first thirty years of his life,

it is interspersed with sharp commentaries on history and politics

as well as intellectual disquisitions on economic theory and philosophy.

-- Sugata Bose ― Harvard Magazine

hypnotic ... Amartya Sen's exemplary life is a lesson in engagement with the world in which he is so at home; he is a real advertisement for someone who is happy being "a citizen of nowhere", or everywhere. -- Ferdinand Mount ― Prospect

it strikes me that Sen is more than an economist, a moral philosopher or even an academic. He is a life-long campaigner, through scholarship and activism, via friendships and the occasional enemy, for a more noble idea of home - and therefore of the world. -- Edward Luce ― Financial Times

This charming and absorbing book ... has the flavour of a relaxed conversation with a gifted raconteur ... Sen's memoir traces the experiences, encounters, and relationships that determined his conceptual concerns and intellectual evolution. It is also a deeply humane appreciation of what life can offer, filled with respect and empathy for other humans. -- Jayati Ghosh ― The Lancet

captivating ... This is not, though, just a book of ideas. Home in the World can't help but be the work of an intellectual. But, as its title implies, it is the work of an intellectual who acknowledges that ideas grow out of - are imbricated with - phenomena external to the self. -- Christopher Bray ― Tablet

[full of] raconteurial energy ... Sen writes with an elegance and wit ... His accounts of his own work are characteristically succinct and fluent ... His evocation of post-war Cambridge and the towering figures of 20th-century economics are affectionate but just. Even more vivid is the picture of his undergraduate days in Calcutta, with its student revolutionaries and generous booksellers. ... It is striking just how much of Sen's own large-hearted liberalism turn out to have been prefigured in the freedoms of his unusual childhood.-- Nikhil Krishnan ― Daily Telegraph

Home in the World is the chronicle of an early life well lived and well considered. -- David Gilmour ― Literary Review

Amartya Sen's memoir Home in the World beautifully conveys the immense, curious charm of his unapologetic high intelligence. -- Philip Hensher ― Spectator Books of the Year

graceful and hopeful ... Home in the World focuses on Sen's formative years, revealing the roots of his academic interests in his early experiences ... Sen is such a charming and engaging narrator -- Barbara Spindel ― Christian Science Monitor

A charming, lively account of Sen's remarkable adolescence -- Zareer Masani ― History Today

Sen's gentle memoir shed[s] light on the distant nooks of a long life of distinction. ... There is something of Tagore in the judicious Mr. Sen. He is an un?inching man of science but also insistently humane. -- Tunku Varadarajan ― Wall Street Journal

warmhearted, clear-eyed account of the formative years of his life, a book that reaches from Myanmar to Berkeley ... a testament to just how far, in one life, one man might go into that vast world ... Sen's writing style is even-keeled and gently humorous. -- Mythili G. Rao ― Washington Post

PRAISE FOR AMARTYA SEN― -

With his masterly prose, ease of erudition and ironic humour, Sen is one of the few great world intellectuals on whom we may rely to make sense out of our existential confusion -- Nadine Gordimer

Amartya Sen is one of the most distinguished minds of our time [who] enjoyably mixes moments of profundity with flashes of mischievous provocation -- William Dalrymple ― New York Review of Books

The world's poor and dispossessed could have no more articulate or insightful a champion -- Kofi Annan

An accessible and exceptional humanitarian -- Jon Snow ― New Statesman

Sen is one of the great minds of both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We owe him a huge debt -- Nicholas Stern

A distinguished inheritor of the tradition of public philosophy and reasoning - Roy, Tagore, Gandhi, Nehru ... if ever there was a global intellectual, it is Sen -- Sunil Khilnani ― Financial Times

Product details
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Allen Lane; 1st edition (21 October 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 480 pages

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Sophie Baker - contemporary of Carly Simon
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the world's most brilliant men writing fascinatingly about his childhood and early years.Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 April 2023
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Great book, to reread and reread.
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Alp
5.0 out of 5 stars A must read for everyone-Reviewed in Spain on 2 August 2021
Verified Purchase

This is a beautiful book not just about the author's memoir, but about how we are all connected as humanity, the beautiful history of India, and the wealth of knowledge they have. The forward-thinking of the Indians and the fact that the earth is not something that needs to be divided up into countries and separate us by borders.

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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars It's a treat to readReviewed in the United States on 29 March 2022
Verified Purchase

It's a must read for any native Bengali speaker and anyone who resided in the state of West Bengal for a considerable period of time. It's captivating read on the thought processes of some of the intellectuals of the 40's and 50's who shaped India into what it is today. It also gives one a nuanced glimpse into the great mind of Sen and how vast his knowledge is on a great range of subjects. It's shameful that the current Indian government and its supporters humiliated him in such a gross and unprovoked manner

6 people found this helpfulReport

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Arupratan

155 reviews · 206 followers

March 17, 2023

World War II was then in full swing. Almost the whole world is in unprecedented destruction. Amartya Sen was only a boy of ten at that time. After leaving his ancestral home in Old Dhaka and St. Gregory's School in Laxmibazar, Dhaka (mainly because of the war) he joined the school in Santiniketan. was living with his grandparents (grandfather was the proverbial Pandit Kshitimohan Sen). No direct impact of World War II had yet reached Santiniketan.

In the spring of 1943, the time of the year when Shantiniketan usually has its festival season, suddenly one day a madman appeared there. An unnaturally insane man. As boys do, they started teasing the madman. According to the inquiry, the man is not crazy at all. He has been starving for more than a month. Due to lack of food for a long time, he has temporary brain deformity. Amartya Sen's first direct contact with the terrible famine of 1943 was thus. This autobiography of Amartya Sen is very different from other five autobiographies.

Many readers may not think of it as an autobiography (or be disappointed after reading it). In this book, the "secret" of family or personal life. He refrained from making bold self-disclosures, or confessionals. He kept his personal life very private. What is the use of reading this autobiography if nothing surprising and exciting information is to be found?

With the publication of the book, the theoretical foundations of "classical economics" were laid. Freed from the chains of monarchical and feudal economic systems that had been going on for a long time, the people of Europe welcomed the market capitalism economy. Capital. The purpose of this economy was to maintain coexistence between these two conditions - demand and supply. In essence, it is called "classical economics". But at the beginning of the 20th century, after the occurrence of a terrible event like the First World War, a radical change in the economic dynamics of the whole world began. All responsibility for the war was placed on the shoulders of Germany by a system called Balkhila. The consequences of this humiliating treaty were far-reaching and the treaty was one of the main causes of World War II. When the Second World War, the most devastating in human history, ended, the economic world was split into two.

In part, the basic theories of capitalist market-based economy have been slightly modified and named as neo-classical economics. In another part, it is said, "Money is strong, market is strong" - this fixed rule of capitalist economy has created serious inequality in the society. The distance between the rich owners and the poor workers is increasing. So the socialist (socialist) economy was recognized as an alternative to the capitalist economy.

It goes without saying that the main creator of the rules of this socialist economy was a German gentleman living in London named Karl Heinrich Marx. After World War II, much of the last century was spent between the theorists of the market economy and the socialist economy. No one has won the battle, but one very important thing has been understood.

The important thing is that neither of these two economies care about the common man. Common people means you, me, and a bunch of insignificant human beings like us. Capitalism wants the big guys to be bigger. Increase the number of markets. Socialist economics wants the overall economic development of the country through government intervention (the word "development" scares me these days). Let the difference between rich and poor disappear. But in the socialist economy, individualism has no special value! Here comes the question, What do I want? If the country improves my what horse eggs will be?

Many people here will say, is this a thing? If the country improves, the people of that country will also improve. Well is that really so? Let's say for example, if the overall GDP of India increases or if the average income of the people increases according to the government calculations, do we have to assume that there is an equal distribution of wealth among all the people of the country? All the people of the country are enjoying the same benefits? There is no need to argue about this again, because even a child has understood the difference between the calculation of the GDP of the state and the living conditions of the common people of the state. Besides, a third option has gradually emerged. Theoretical economists began to think about this third option when Amartya Sen went to Cambridge University to study economics. During the global economic crisis of the 1930s, a British economist named John Maynard Keynes sowed the seeds of this third option. Before going abroad, Amartya Sen inquired about this alternative theory, read books, from the time he was studying at Presidency College, Calcutta. He himself commented in his autobiography that his intellectual hero during his student days in Calcutta was the Italian economist Piero Sraffa. This Sraffa was a very close friend of John Maynard Keynes. While studying at Cambridge, Amartya Sen had Piero Sraffa as his academic supervisor. How fortunate!

Amartya Sen made full use of this good fortune. I have read earlier in Amartya Sen's various writings, he highly respects the ethnic nature of Bengali discussion-argument-debate. Argument is an ancient variant of traditional Indian philosophical reasoning and education. He mentions numerous times in the book how much his early life at Santiniketan and then at the coffeehouses and other hangouts of College Street in Calcutta contributed to the development of his own intelligence and thinking. . Where people of diametrically opposed ideologies engage in discussion among themselves—not just to win the argument—but to sharpen their own ideas. To learn something new. It is in the context of this discussion that Amartya Sen narrated the stories of his education and career to countless teachers, friends, classmates and students. About their strange thinking. This is the most interesting feature of this autobiography of Amartya Sen. As I read the book, I repeatedly felt that the attractive world of free, liberal and constructive discussion has departed from the earth today. What has changed is the troll, meme, status, tweet, post-based system of social media, which is sick, shallow and flashy. In this system, the more instant jokes one can deliver, the more people one can hurt, the more people one can talk about, the more likes or followers one gets (and that's their salvation). We now have an "exchange" of thoughts. Don't, just "pay" I do And those whose opinions do not agree with our own, we immediately snap their necks. I am so cool and the rest are fools. All, of course, is hidden behind a computer or mobile screen.However, another major achievement of this book is its direct account of the time and environment when the third alternative economy is slowly gaining mainstream acceptance. Given by Amartya Sen. He himself associated his thoughts and career with that third option. The third option is called: "Welfare Economics" (welfare economics). The characteristic of this economy is that it gives importance to another thing beyond capital, market, development, state, profit, its name - people. Human means not only the entire human society, but also a single individual is given importance. "A stupid common man!"What the whole society wants, cano wants, how it behaves — is more important than what a single man wants, cano wants, how it behaves. Because each of us has many different identities. And each identity has its own value. You can simultaneously be a Bengali, a Hindu, a girl, a graduate, unemployed, a poet, a lover of so-and-so, a sister of so-and-so, a daughter of so-and-so, a homosexual, a believer in God, and a supporter of the Argentina football team (the number of identities can grow much more). No one else understands, you know, that each of these identities is important to you. Your whole life, your actions, your decisions,These identities drive your past-present-future. None of these can be omitted.

How do these individual identities and individual preferences affect the economy? Very generally speaking, this was the subject of Amartya Sen's original research. Where it is difficult to calculate the overall likes and dislikes of the people of a country, how can only one person be given importance? Because, importance should be given. This is the main purpose of welfare economics.

When these different human identities are not given importance separately, then we call someone "he is a Muslim" Or "He is an Indian" Or "He is an atheist" Or "he is a vegetarian" Or "He's a fan of the Brazil football team"—we started calling such broken identities. Even if called, there is no problem, it is a problem, I started to judge them in a broken way. That's when the trouble started. That's when we become aggressive. That's when we become small. That's when we say "holier than thou" become Then we say: The man is praying, that means he is not a Muslim. And Muslim means... he is just Muslim. He has no identity! There is no other entity! Nothing! All the rest of the identity of the whole person then disappeared. Only one word remains. "Muslim". Personally, I am greatly enriched after reading this book. My thoughts have been elegant. Economics is one of my interests. I have been trying to understand Amartya Sen's thoughts and work for a long time. A lost time, a lost world, a few lost brilliant men and their thoughts, and personalities like Amartya Sen will be a missing link between today's complex and strange times. whose number is rapidly decreasing. He did not express envy or hatred towards anyone in the book of four hundred pages. For once the "Nobel Prize" did not pronounce the word. There was a light of witty humor spread throughout the book. After finishing the book, I realized that "modesty" - this word suits only learned people. This deeply resonant word has no place in today's troll, status, reel, meme-culture! There is no room!Where the desert of trivial ritualThe stream of justice has not been swallowed up,The man has not done the hundred; Eternally whereYou are the leader of all action thoughts and joy—I strike mercilessly with my own hands, Father,Awake in that heaven in India.

32 likes

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Shadin Pranto

1,251 reviews · 311 followers

October 22, 2022

If autobiography means association with great economists, history of studying and teaching at famous universities and memories of growing up in Dhaka and Calcutta, then I have nothing to say.

Not a drop of self-criticism. I didn't find anything that moved me as a reader. Knowing that people can be slanderous, I honestly don't get to describe uncomfortable personal life events.

Overall, this is a very boring and mediocre memoir. If Amartya Sen, Master of Economics of Moklespur Yaduchandra University College writes the book instead of Amartya Sen, the world famous economist Amartya Sen might write a memoir full of such insignificant incidents!

24 likes

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Arun Pandiyan

155 reviews · 34 followers

November 10, 2021

This year I undertook a reading marathon of the books written by Dr. Amartya Sen. As I was finishing his previous literature one by one, curiosity filled me as to how such a novel approach to philosophy and economics was developed by Dr. Sen which was heavily in contrast to the approach of his contemporary counterparts.

Much of his previous works had emphasized his relationship with Rabindranath Tagore and his formative years in Santiniketan as the root cause for his intellectual valor. As I waited patiently for the autobiography this year, when his memoir was first released, I quickly grabbed a copy of it and began reading.

In the backdrop of the 1934 earthquake with Bihar as its epicenter, tremors were felt in Kolkata where baby Amartya Sen was merrily asleep when his family was seeking protection. This incident was the first-ever memory of his childhood, as told by his grandparents. For the people who have read Tagore’s rebuttal to Gandhi’s proclamation that this earthquake was an act of God to punish the sinners, Dr. Sen’s journey begins right there. Much of this memoir has captivating references to Tagore's work and how the Santiniketan shaped Dr. Sen’s intellect in his childhood.

At this time of ever-growing narrow-mindedness and parochialism, reading Dr. Sen’s school life in Santiniketan makes us believe that true open-mindedness begins from exploring the world without letting it cloaked by jingoism and identity, rather by letting in tolerance, acceptance, and curiosity.

As the narration moves forward to his days in Presidency College, Dr. Sen had penned relevant chapters on the history of West Bengal, Bengali, and Bangladesh starting from early India to the Battle of Plassey, followed by the rise of left-wing politics within the freedom movement and finally to the murderous Bengal Famine.

Even though he identifies himself as an atheist, his grandfather Kshitimohan Sen’s profound impact on him in the subject of Hinduism/Charvaka [an ancient school of Indian materialism] epistemology/Lokayata [A Study in Ancient Indian Materialism] is yet another factor that molded Sen’s approach to Justice through the lens of Nyaay and Niti, which later got published in 2008.

[Amartya Sen and 'The Idea of Justice'

Niti in Sanskrit legal thinking deals with just rules and institutions, while Nyaya is about their realization. Niti is an abstract exercise that, if ...]

Throughout the narration, Dr. Sen makes the reader believe in two things: (a) his commitment to secularism from an early age and (b) his deep interest in seeing the world as a curator than as a clash of civilization or power struggle between the classes.

As far as I understood, this was due to the presence of multi-party adherents within his family, his multicultural connections in Santiniketan, and his conscious distance from active political engagements.

Astonishingly, when he turned twenty-three, he was ready to submit his Ph.D. thesis and has agreed to set up the economics department at Jadavpur University.

Yet another interesting narration was on his willingness to try philosophy after economics when he quickly changed his domain working on philosophical arguments by continuing the idea from Kennet Arrow’s Social Choice Theory interlinking it with economics to further create a new field termed as welfare economics, which as a subject was though initially rejected by American Universities, but was later awarded Nobel Prize for it.

There is a particular chapter in the book titled 'What to make of Marx' which developed a rather peculiar interest in me to read a bit more of Karl Marx in the coming days, especially after reading Sen’s citation of the ‘Critique of the Gotha Program’ referring to Marx��s commitment to multiple identities, free speech, and liberty which the later communist powers failed to recognize and present post-modernists fail to promote. This memoir was too small to hold all the names of men and women who influenced Amartya Sen, starting from Tagore in his childhood to his landlady with an aversion for brown people who later became a strong proponent of racial equality. But this memoir is dense in detailing and carries sprinkles of wisdom from a wise man who learned his lessons from multiple people as he navigated his life.

Reading Amartya Sen had always ignited a passion for intellectual arguments in me that I can quickly point to him as an inspiration for my interests in economics, moral philosophy, and ethics.

There were many life lessons one could take from this memoir.

Firstly, it had deep insights on diverse subjects explained lucidly by a man who self-diagnosed his cancer at the age of eighteen with a few oncology books borrowed from the city library.

Secondly, it inspires one to learn, learn more, and learn without boundaries from everyone from the narration of a self-proclaimed atheist who took his idea of Justice from Indian origin religious texts and epics.

Finally, it persuades us to view the world as our home as Tagore once persuaded Dr. Sen with his “Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls”.

18 likes

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Pulkit Singh

35 reviews · 4 followers

August 11, 2021

Like a grandfather reminiscing about his childhood and younger years- that is how Amartya Sen's 'Home In The World' reads.

I dreaded Economics the one year I studied it in school, scoring the least in it. But the Nobel laureate in Economics has written a book that is surprisingly accessible. Few bits are funny, it is mostly witty and comprehensively erudite the book's lilting tenor lulled me into a trance. When it would break, without effort I would have read so many pages.

English is Sen's third language after Bengali and Sanskrit (!!). He even dreams in Bengali.

Sen has led a privileged life, a fact he acknowledges with humility. His mother was Rabindranath Tagore's student, Sen was named 'Amartya' by the great man himself. He makes a passing mention of his achievements, never pausing to add more weight to them.

My favourite incident from his life would be with the one with his landlady. At 'Porter Lodge', the lady worries that his brown colour would wash off with the water ruining her white bathtub. He assures her it will not. Interactions with him change her as much that she becomes a supporter of racial equality-she dances with an African for two hours straight when he can't find a partner. It is the African who gets fatigued first.

The book twinkles with anecdotes and his reflections. The greats of the world with whom he has rubbed shoulders walk through his stories with as much ease as the reader does. Sen takes you along on his journey from being a little boy growing up in Dacca(as it was known then) and Santiniketan to his adulthood. You witness the evolution of his thinking, analytical mind- his intellectual trajectory.

Hop on, it's an interesting cruise.

14 likes

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227 reviews · 12 followers

October 1, 2023

4.75 / 5.00

This was a marvelously enjoyable read for me.Sen has a great sense of humor which comes across easily in his text. He truly had the life of a 'global intellectual', since his very childhood days at Shantiniketan. The book could have been organized in a better way, I especially found the ending portion to be a bit abrupt; but I suppose more than a book of his memories it is rather a book of the ideas that shaped his life and view of the world, and how he came to hold them mostly through the company and friendship of some brilliant people.

~ 1 October 2023

9 likes

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Manu

370 reviews · 51 followers

March 17, 2023

It's really difficult to write anything about a memoir because while it is written for an audience, it is also intensely personal. But I think the perspectives are such that it deserves a larger audience, and I hope even this drop in the ocean can help in that!

The book is more about the life, and less about the work. They obviously intermingle to a large extent, but the focus is on the relationships and the exchange of thoughts. In some cases, the subjects of discussion also manage to creep in, but they aren't inaccessible, except on a couple of occasions.

In the beginning, when I started reading about his background, and his family's relationship with Tagore, I thought he was privileged. What added to it was the seemingly casual mention of historical figures, Gandhi downwards! It would be easy to think of this as incessant name-dropping, but Amartya Sen bends over backwards in acknowledging the privilege, and luck, that shaped his life.

What we actually get is a behind-the-scenes look at how his worldview evolved over time. I am quite amazed by the prodigious memory! Starting with the openness intrinsic in the Shantiniketan pedagogy, to his discussions with extended family and family friends, the debates at Presidency College and then Cambridge, the book is full of personalities and their ideas, and how they shaped the thinking of a Nobel laureate. But more than the awards, what comes out is an unwavering openness to different perspectives, an approach to problem-solving that involves conversations and debates, and most importantly, a sense of justice that follows the tradition of Tagore and Adam Smith.

The narrative has a disarming humility and a sense of humour that will win you over. That, combined with a richness of discourse that is increasingly hard to find, makes this an excellent read.

P.S. Thanks to the book, I learnt that bosons (as made famous by Higgs boson, a.k.a. The God Particle) were named after Satyendra Nath Bose

P.P.S. I found at least three books of different genres to read courtesy this book

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Lisa

447 reviews · 66 followers

December 16, 2021

A significant contributor to the field of economics, Amartya Sen’s weighty memoir delves deep into his memory bank to give the reader insights into his home in the world. Much of the book harkens back to his childhood in Dhaka, Mandalay, Calcutta, and Santiniketan, as well as his early formative years in school and university. I found the early parts interesting as Sen describes his family’s association with the Nobel Poet Laureate Rabindranath Tagore and Tagore’s significant contribution and influence on Bengal and India on numerous fronts. Tagore’s groundbreaking philosophy on education and the cultural world were key factors in Sen’s education and outlook. They left an indelible stamp on the author. Also noteworthy is Sen’s focus on the struggle for India’s independence and the challenges of religious strife in a secular India, stirred constantly by politicians for their gain. I particularly appreciated his ability to convey how people of different religions in India do live in harmony most of the time, despite the fact that we tend to frequently hear more about religious acrimony and conflict. He waxed eloquently about his line of work, what influenced his thinking and approach, and his path to success. From a writing style perspective, I found the book to be excruciatingly bogged down in overly minute details, a laundry list of names of who’s who in what seemed like every encounter he had in his entire life. It felt like he wanted to acknowledge everyone he’d ever met or was testing himself on how many people he could remember going back to his childhood days, which works for him, but not to me, the reader. Overall I found the book interesting in some parts, in others, not so much. Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

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Pavan Korada

16 reviews · 3 followers

November 27, 2022

Fascinating account of not just the leading economist of our times but a glimpse into the social life of an elite section (Upper Caste-Upper Class) of India. I'm glad that Dr. Sen allowed himself to be poetic, demonstrated in some few elegant turns of phrases. This book also lays out his major themes of economic and philosophical work including social choice theory and realisation-based ideas of justice. The chapter on Karl Marx is one of the most lucid analysis of his ideas I have ever come across. Other minor interests of his including Sanskrit, identity and, most importantly, Buddhism have been discussed in enough detail. One disappointment is that for all his intellectual and moral commitment to the problem of inequality, there is very little discussion about the strictly social aspect of inequality in the Indian context, that is, Caste; more so considering his other major interest Buddhism, which was as much a rebellion against social inequity (read Caste System) as it was a tussle with the major metaphysical debates of the time. I felt the book ended abruptly. It ends when Dr. Sen was 30 years old. He is 88 now. I hope there is another part coming up soon about the remaining 58 years, at least. Strongly recommend.

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Brecht Rogissart

15 reviews · 2 followers

December 28, 2023

Sen's memoir is a testimony of uncomplicated cosmopolitanism in a politically muddy world. Especially in the first two parts - on his childhood in West Bengal - he displays a caring, universalist identity shaped through political turmoil: the Bengali famine of 1943, the conflicts between Muslims and Hundi's, and the quest for independence from Britain in a divided cast system. Especially his relation to the colonial oppressor was somewhat surprising: Although he was always, of course, a strong supporter of independence, his acknowledgment of 'positive' British influences on Indian thinking and literature is unsettling and admirable at the same time. Through his eyes, I've learned a lot about Indian leftist political debates when the country struggled for independence. During the Second World War, Indian leftists were debating if they should remain loyal to Britain's position (in fact, it were the British who had forced them into alligning with them, without consulting the Indians). Were the British going to give them more independence in exchange? Should they place their bets on a conquering Soviet Union who would help them? Or was the imperialist Japanese power the solution? These were not solely questions of a unified Indian nation: wihtin West Bengal, the possibility of independence within a specific (class) division of Muslims and Hundi's was mingled into the debate as well. Astonishing to see how the global trickled down in the local and morphed into new dimensions I hadn't heard of before. Althusser's "overdetermination" makes more sense when you confront theory with history.

In the later parts, Sen becomes a succesfull academic and his memoir also shifts somewhat. Unfortunately, he doesn't focus on the intellectual debates too much. Sometimes it reads as if he's giving a long list of friends he made at every uni he went to, where he then shortly summarizes their professional career ("as he would later turn out to be a great economist at the Labour party offices"). However, fortunately, his two intellectual tutors, Maurice Dobb and Piero Sraffa (two economists at Cambridge) reoccur constantly, alongside Joan Robinson and "Nicky" Kaldor. It was amusing to read funny anecdotes about them (for example, Sraffa pointing out to Baran that this side of Sraffa's library is only "full of trash", after which Baran points to his books being on that shelf). In addition, Sen is able to switch from anecdotes to really helpful summaries of debates and contributions from people he admires and formed his thinking (he gives a summary of Srafa's thought in one page that is so much more helpful than his endlessly technical Wiki-page).

I especially learned a lot about Piero Srafa! I thought he was just an obscure post-keynesian with a special interest in Ricardo. I had no clue he was a close friend of Gramsci and that he was editor of L'Ordine Nuovo. Apparently, there was something of a Gramsci-Sraffa debate in Italy in the 1920s, on the question for the need of a broad democratic resistance against fascism (Sraffa was in favour of the broad coalition, Gramsci disagreed initially). In addition, Sraffa had an exceptionally big influence on Wittgenstein, and he himself acknowledged that the transition from "young" to "second" Wittgenstein was formed through his weekly talks with Sraffa. According to the myth, it was Sraffa who stroke his two fingers accross his chin (a Neapolitan gesture) saying: "what's the logical identity of this?", indicating that an anthropoligical study of language was so much more important than a strictly logical one. My new year resolution is to finally read "the production of commodities by means of commidities"