Yan Yifei|Amartya Sen's "Four Seas as Home"

When I heard that Professor Amartya Sen's memoir was about to be published, the English title Home in the World automatically translated the words "Home from the World" in my mind. Whether or not the translation of the title is accurate, in the process of reading through the book, I can indeed feel strongly that it is too apt to summarize Sen's life journey with this word: soon after birth, he lived with his parents in Myanmar, his education extended from the Bay of Bengal around the Indian Ocean to England, and his teaching and research was based in Delhi, Kolkata, London, Oxford and two Cambridges...

This memoir focuses on the first three decades of this journey that spanned the globe. This means that the book lacks a systematic introduction to the famous economist's academic thought, but it also provides readers with a rare opportunity to appreciate the flourishing grace of Sencha's youth.

In the acknowledgements at the beginning of the book, Sen worries that indulging in his own memories will make others completely uninterested. He said it took him a lot of effort to ensure clarity and coherence in the narrative. Now it seems that this effort is undoubtedly successful, and it will even make people sigh in the process of reading, which is completely overkill.

In the book, Sen reviews his childhood and adolescence, the turmoil of his home country during this period, his studies in Kolkata and Cambridge, and ends the book with his teaching experience and reflections at the Delhi School of Economics. If this neat layout of the plot increases the fluency of reading, then thanks to Sen's extensive involvement in economics and philosophy, the reading process will also be accompanied by a sense of surprise that is constantly smashed by randomly dropped "knowledge bags". The size and content of the "Fukubukuro" naturally varies from person to person, including but not limited to: the specific route and harvest of the Yijing and Dharma Xian Journey to the West, the unique "Bengali calendar" San, which combines Hindu and Islamic wisdom, the differences between the two historical Muslim towns of Dhaka and Lucknow, and Tagore's choreographic talent as a choreographer and director.

Secondly, in terms of content, it is also difficult for readers not to marvel at Mori's legendary experience. This legend includes not only his bookish family lineage, the unusual name given by Rabindranath Tagore (the title of which book is also inspired by Tagore's book The Home and The World), or which of his Cambridge classmates or predecessors became the prime minister or minister of which country he went on to become — even beyond these identities defined by human relationships, Amartya Sen himself is far more vivid and rich than the well-known label of "Nobel Prize winner".

Sen showed early on a vast and exuberant thirst for knowledge across time and space; In his first year of admission to Presidency College (founded in 1817, the oldest college in India, transformed into a university in 2010), he was diagnosed with secondary oral squamous cell carcinoma, and bravely survived radiation therapy with extraordinary composure and timely diagnosis; Later, in the process of applying for the British Empire, he was rejected by Cambridge University early, and he was unexpectedly admitted a few months later due to the withdrawal of others; The Nobel Museum is probably the only laureate in the world who has been with a bicycle for half a century...

If these amazing examples reflect a different side of Mori, then taking advantage of the summer vacation to "stuff Europe into a backpack" by hitchhiking, buying student tickets, and staying in hostels, feeling the kindness of strangers again and again in the process, and even having the idea of opening a travel company in case of failure in school, will probably make countless international students who have had similar experiences smile. The then principal of Dhaka San Gregory Primary School, shortly after learning that he had won the Nobel Prize, turned over Sen's examination paper with the good wishes of encouraging the current students, but he was surprised that he ranked fifth from the bottom of the class of 37 students, which may also be the same reaction of the majority of "tiger parents and tiger mothers".

Although a systematic account of Sen's academic achievements is not the focus of this book, these early experiences provide a valuable window into his academic pursuits. For example, it was the Bengal famine of 1943 that prompted him to conduct development economics research in the hope of preventing a repeat of similar disasters. His studies in Santiniketan (a northern suburb of Kolkata where Tagore founded the International University of India in 1901) and the religious tolerance of the history of the subcontinent that he spied with his maternal grandfather, a well-known Sanskrit scholar, can also be seen as the original fertile ground for his profound knowledge and deep thinking to bear fruit.

It is precisely for this reason that the four seas are home can not only be understood in the geographical sense, but also on the spiritual level. Although Sen does not quote in the Analects that "if you go three, you will have my master," the word "inclusiveness" he proposes in the preface has a similar effect. At the same time, he has already heard and practiced this spiritual "home in the world": thanks to Tagore's foresight and the "multinational force" he convened to Heping Township (including Professor Tan Yunshan from China who made pioneering contributions to China studies in India), Sen's classroom discussions in Heping Township can transition from traditional Indian literature to traditional and contemporary Western thought, and then go on to explore China, Japan, Africa or Latin America; The breadth of the "eighteen martial arts" mastered by graduates from Heping Township is often surprising, and I wonder if it can be regarded as the continuation and epitome of the "Bengal Renaissance". Among his classmates were both excellent engineers and excellent singers; A year before him, Satyajit Ray, in addition to his dazzling career as a film director, is also a writer who has mastered many literary genres, and even designed many English and Bengali fonts. Lei also mentioned in a later memoir article, "It was Heping Township that turned me into a product of East and West."

However, as another sentence in the Analects reveals, "Learning without thinking is ignorant", if the maximum freedom of inquiry highlights the romantic temperament of "the four seas are home", in order to obtain knowledge and ideological wealth, it is inseparable from the consciousness of rational thinking. This means clarifying the truth from the noisy or empty space, and using different perspectives to fully explore the "why" or "how" behind it. In the book, Sen frankly said that the combination and unity of "freedom" and "reason", or the ability to extract true knowledge through speculation from the ocean of pluralism, is the spiritual resource that his school years in Heping Township brought him throughout his life. His more general exposition of the importance of these two combinations appeared earlier in his scholarly treatise Development with Freedom; The criticism and reflection on recent trends in Myanmar, India and even the world derived from these memories also add more practical significance to this book because of these two unique footholds. But because of the sensitivity of studying social and educational policies, the story that struck me most in the book is that Heping Township banned corporal punishment of students early on in the days when corporal punishment was still commonplace. When his grandfather revealed to him the meaning behind the prohibition, he said that this was not only because of the barbarism of the action itself, but also because he wanted to let students understand that the right action must be based on a rational understanding of what is right, not just to avoid pain or humiliation. This in itself is also exercising and enjoying the freedom of rational thinking.

This memoir took nearly ten years to write. Almost a decade ago, an undergraduate student on his first trip to India came across Sen and his student Jean Drez's India: Economic Development and Social Opportunity on the shelf of Fudan Wentu, and was inspired by the fourth chapter of the book, "India and China," which led to a career of comparative study of contemporary Chinese and Indian public policy. Reading this book after more than ten years of homesickness is indeed a great comfort, guidance and encouragement during the epidemic.

Author: Yan Yifei

Editor: Liu Di