Just finished reading the essay titled “The Indian Identity” from the Argumentative Indian by Amartya Sen. I am trying to summarize the main ideas expressed in this essay here, to share them with you and get your views. In this essay Amartya Sen dives into Indian history to identify the roots of the Indian identity and various dilemmas faced in defining such an identity.
The question to be answered here is whether the Hindu identity and the Indian identity are separate or are they inseparable? On this, Sen is very clear that the Hindu identity is very distinct from the Indian identity. India has a pluralist and multi-religious population with Jews, Christians, Parsees and Muslims. Identity has to be chosen with reasoning and is not a matter of discovery. The Indian constitution is secular in nature and so one religion cannot be attributed to the Indian identity.
The Indian Identity has been one of integration of several cultures over a long period of time. Challenges to this have come from separatism within India particularly with the privileging of one community over the others and one cultural tradition over others. Indians have multiple identities based on their association with any specific community, language, religion or home country. There is varying relevance of different identities in different contexts and we have the choice to how much significance we attach to our different identities. However, there is no escape from reasoning just because the notion of identity has been invoked.
Global movements of ideas, people, goods and technology have tended to benefit progress and development in different regions. Sometimes the global movement of ideas is seen as the ideological imperialism of the West - as a one-sided movement that simply reflects an asymmetry of power which needs to be resisted.
Amartya Sen mentions that the Indian Institutes of Technology, which were launched at the initiative of Nehru have been critical at flowering information technology and related developments in India. These along with the Institutes of Management have brought many dividends and have certainly been instrumental in opening up new possibilities for Indians. The development of Indian school systems has also been extraordinary. If we are not able to seize the economic opportunities for the manufacture of simple products in a way that has happened in Japan, Korea, China and other countries in east Asia, not to mention the West, it is because of a neglect of basic education.
The real debate on globalization is ultimately not about efficiency of markets or about the importance of modern technology, but rather about the asymmetries of power, for which there is much less tolerance today than after the Second World War. Amartya Sen argues that India has to move to import substitution and then to export promotion to build economies such as those of South Korea and Taiwan.
India today faces many challenges in setting up advanced manufacturing industries in the sectors such as semiconductors and electronics, advanced transportation systems and energy systems such as smart grids, solar and nuclear power to achieve energy security. These challenges are very similar to those faced by Jamsetji Tata in setting up the first steel mills in this country in 1907. Jamsetji Tata wanted to have a flourishing iron and steel industry in India whence the British had not setup a single steel mill in this country in their entire rule. It was during the Swadeshi Movement in India that Dorabji Tata was able to gain enough financial support from Indians for construction of the first steel mills that started rolling out steel in 1911. We will need similar initiative today to achieve energy security in this country that imports more than half of its requirements of oil, gas and coal.
P.S. The British are the largest investors in the Indian economy today out of the G8 nations.
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