Letters to law students #40 Amartya Sen’s memoirs

Letter to Law Students#40 Amartya Sen’s memoirs

My dear law students?

It’s been a long time since I wrote to you. I thought I should remedy this by writing to you about Amartya’s Sen’s memoirs. These were published last year but I got round to reading it only in the last few weeks. As usual, this is not a book review. I want to talk about some of the aspects of Sen’s writing that interested me and that I hope will interest you.?

Amartya Sen is probably the most well known academic that India has produced. When I picked up his memoir I was expecting to read about his life. That’s what it is about, but it is only about the first thirty years of his life, which is almost exactly one third of his current age. This in itself is remarkable, for I can’t imagine remembering the first one third of my life in such granular detail even if I reach my nineties with my teeth intact. But Sen has managed this somehow. He remembers phrases and words and events in the distant past owing perhaps to his prodigious memory or contemporaneous notes. There are some memories I can identify with; at one point he writes ‘It was on a monsoon-drenched day in July 1951 that I registered to do economics, with mathematics, at Presidency College.’?I think we tend to remember the weather around critical events in our lives. At another point, he is apologetic about not remembering the name of a person he had met sixty eight years ago. Since I don’t remember meetings that happened about a couple of years ago, I am very impressed indeed with Sen’s memory.?

When you read Sen’s memoirs, you will notice the breadth of his scholarship. From his days as a student in Shantiniketan, he is interested in mathematics, Sanskrit and philosophy, and he combines his interests in these domains in his future research work. For Sen, these three domains came together; for others it might be other domains. I know law students who have combined history, philosophy and law. Others have synthesised forensics, psychology and the law. The possibilities are endless, and perhaps it is by combining our interests that we can build something unique in our contributions.?

I was struck by the manner in which Sen developed his scholarship. His academic pedigree must have helped but what’s fascinating is that he spends his time with people from varying backgrounds and motivations, and in various age groups. When he was young, he learnt as much from his peers and his uncles and his grandfather as much as from his classes. I think that’s a great way to learn things. Go talk to as many people as you can, wherever and whenever you can, and you will learn a great many things. You will also end up with people who you believe have wasted your time but that’s not such a big deal considering the various other serendipitous conversations that will give you ideas and connections. I mention connections because one might be misled into thinking that Sen just acted as a sponge, absorbing information from others. It was more than that; he also developed life long deep relationships with a incredibly large number of people, which I think added to his scholarship in significant ways. His memoirs has a names index in addition to a subject index, and I like to think it’s not vanity but a plain statement of the number of people that Sen considers his friends.?

I was also very impressed with Sen’s fortitude. When he meets his landlady (Mrs. Hanger) in Cambridge in the early fifties, she asks Sen whether his colour will come off in a really hot bath.?He denies any such thing but does not make any further fuss. When I read about this incident, I wondered if in today’s age she would have survived such a remark. I like this episode for its tolerance. One person indulged another persons ignorance and both were the better for it. Mrs. Hanger later became one of Sen’s closest benefactors and in her own way, a votary for equality. At one time, she was upset that at a club, an Englishwoman did not dance with an African man, so she danced with that man for more than an hour until the poor man said he wanted to go home.

Finally, there is an incident in Sen’s book that stayed with me. Sen travels in a train from London to Warsaw to give some lectures at Warsaw University. He has to change trains at Berlin, but he misses his connection because his train arrives late in Berlin. He is stranded in a strange city with no friends. He has no money to spend on a room and a bed. Incredibly he runs into an Indian student (Shyam Sundar De) who at that time was studying engineering in Berlin and was at the station because his girlfriend wanted to use the facilities at the station. Shyam makes sure Sen gets a tour of Berlin, arranges for his dinner and puts him up in a guest house at his engineering college.?He then accompanies Sen to the train station and gives him some money to carry with him. How will Sen pay him back? Easy. They arrange to meet again in the train station fourteen days later when Sen is on his way back. Sen remembers meeting geniuses and achievers but like us, he also remembers strangers and their random acts of kindness.

Prof. Nigam Nuggehalli

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