A talkative tradition

This piece is taken from 'The Argumentative Indian' (2005) by Amartya Sen, the economist who won the Nobel Prize in 1998. The book is about Indian culture, history and identity.

Sen begins with humour: Indians like to talk. Krishna Menon's speech at the United Nations, nearly nine hours long, is still the longest ever given there.

Even our epics are long. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are vastly longer than Homer's epics: the Mahabharata alone is about seven times as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey put together.

And they are full of dialogues, dilemmas, and alternative points of view.

Their arguments and counter-arguments are not just talk: they are often serious and substantive. India has long loved to argue.