ESSAY Manjushree lives in Bangalore and travels around India in search of gurus who will advance her Sankrit knowledge.
The Argumentative Indian Manjushree Hegde
I
ndians, it seems, are argumentative. In the words of a 19th-century Bengali poet, Ram Mohan Roy, “Just consider how terrible the day of your death will be. Others will go on speaking, and you will not be able to argue back.” Thus we are told that the real hardship of death would be our frustrating inability to argue. Although it is a humorous note, it is not untrue; Indian intellectual tradition is, in fact, a stock of debates and arguments, and all classical Indian texts contain within their pages elaborate expositions and discussions among the different schools of thought. The Vedas may be full of
hymns and religious invocations, but they also tell stories, speculate about the world and – true to argumentative propensity – ask difficult questions. A basic doubt concerns the very creation of the world: did someone make it, was it a spontaneous emergence, and is there a God who knows what really happened? The Rgveda goes on to express radical doubts on these issues: “Who really knows? Who will here proclaim it? Whence was it produced? Whence is this creation? … perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not – the one who looks down on it, in the highest heaven, only he knows – or perhaps he does not know.” …