An evening with a legendary personage

The event, ‘An evening with Amartya Sen’, which was held on December 17 at the Multipurpose Hall, India International Centre (IIC), was a book discussion of Dr Sen’s recently published work -The Country of First Boys. Former Governor of West Bengal, ex IAS officer and a diplomat Gopalkrishna Gandhi was also present for the event and conversed with Dr Sen about the book. Gopalkrishna Gandhi has also given an introduction to the book in the form of a foreword which contains a precise description of why Dr Sen’s work is so influential. It also describes his approach to public events and about Sen’s contributions to the public arena.

The event attracted the presence of the who’s who of Delhi, consisting of big names from the intellectual circuit, political figures, bureaucrats, media personnel, diplomats as well as people from international locus in the form of admirers who showed up in numbers filling up the hall in IIC, beyond capacity. Important guests, including Shashi Tharoor, Sitaram Yechury and Sharmila Tagore, were also in attendance.

The book, which is the no. 1 bestseller in the category of social and welfare studies, marks the return of Dr Sen to Oxford, informed Niko Pfund, President, Oxford University Press, USA and global academic publisher. He said: “We are publishing the work, firstly, because this marks Dr Sen’s return to Oxford and I’m delighted to be able to welcome him back. The more important reason is that when you work at publishing house such as Oxford, you actually view the world through the prism of books that appeal to a relatively small audience, which we publish in numbers. They are essentially academic works that cater to a particular discipline or people within that discipline, who have a certain approach to the world. Then you have works that are published to cater to a number of people and a number of disciplines and then there are works that are intended to reach far beyond the academy and I think it’s apt to say that we have in our midst tonight, not just India’s, but one of the world’s leading public intellectuals.” Talking about the collaboration of Oxford University Press and ‘the little magazine’ (tlm, which is an independent print magazine devoted to essays, fiction, poetry, art and criticism), Niko said: “It is also important to point out that it appeals to me the way this book resulted from the collaboration between the world’s largest university press and the self-described “tlm”. This shows how publishing brings people from different walks of life together.”

Antara Dev Sen, Editor, “tlm”, said: “Many of you present here are in some way or the other are associated with ‘the little magazine’ as a subscriber, a contributor, a writer or an artist and I’m very glad that we have in our midst two people who have been very closely related to “tlm”. Dr Amartya Sen has been giving us essays throughout the years, making time and space for us despite his busy schedule.” Talking about The Country of First Boys, she said: “Today we are gathered here to discuss about The Country of First Boys which is the first of the tlm-OUP collaboration series. The title might sound a little fishy but once you read the book, you’ll find out what it is all about. Here we have the first of the first boys, who seems to be quite uncomfortable with the country of first boys. The cover of the book focuses on the last girl, so it is basically about the country of the first boys and the last girls and how we deal with the issues involved.”

The dais was then taken over by Gopalkrishna Gandhi, who provided a brief insight into the Nobel Laureate’s life, narrating a funny incident before moving on to the discussion. He said, “There was a similar event in Chennai two years ago where a school girl asked him, ‘Sir, what is your favourite book?’ and Amartya babu said without a moment’s pause, ‘I have no favourite books. Favourite books are like favoured books and there are only some societies that have favoured books, books that are in favour. I want my Milton, I want my Tagore, Shakespeare and my Khalil Gibran. I want all of them.’ So, that is who is Amartya Sen really is. There are icons and iconoclast, there are dominations of people and ideas and there are indomitable people. And Dr Sen is an iconoclast and an indomitable person. He doesn’t do what anybody wants him to do but he does what he is impelled to do, for which we should be grateful and should celebrate.”

“This book contains what may be described by publishers and readers as Amartya Sen’s occasional writings by which describes his reflections on matters which are beyond what is regarded as his main preoccupation coming from his discipline”, he added.

The event consisted of a face-to-face question-answer session between Dr Amartya Sen and Gopalkrishna Gandhi. The conversation, which began with the question about calenders, a topic descriptively discussed in the book, progressed on to the knowledge of Sanskrit possessed by Dr Sen through the inheritance of the language from his family. 

A very interesting question asked to Dr Sen by Gopalkrishna Gandhi was that ‘given the enormous impact and presence of Sanskrit in your home during your childhood, is it possible by the twist of history, instead of becoming a historian, an economist or a world stature, you might have actually become a priest?’ to which Professor Sen answered: “A Priest? I don’t think that would have quite worked! A priest repeats things without mostly knowing the source from which it came. For example-when a priest says Bengali Son calendar, he doesn’t remember that he’s celebrating Muhammad Ghori from Mecca-Madina.’ Apart from these, various topics given in his book were touched upon.

Others who joined in the conversation were Pamela Philipose, journalist and senior fellow at the Indian Council of Social Science Research and Reetika Khera, Associate Professor of Economics, IIT Delhi. The last round of the discussion was opened up for the audience, who asked something in/out of the book, to Professor Sen. Hands went up immediately at the very mention of it, with people struggling to grab the mic and to put forward their questions. Dr Sen very sportingly answered most of the questions. Many got a chance to ask questions and many were left disappointed due to the lack of time, but on-the-whole people seemed very satisfied as all gathered to get their copy of the book signed at the end of the event.