ABSTRACT
The value of history of the ancient past for the present is an ongoing debate that has continued to impact the public domain. Writing of lessons that history holds for life and politics in the present,1 Nobel laureate and economist Amartya Sen reasons that Ashoka and Buddha embodied a rational and critical tradition of inquiry and were markers of a liberal and pluralist India. In his review of Sen’s work, historian Sabyasachi Bhattacharya countered the notion of continuity between the past and the present and instead suggested that a dialogic link with the ancient past is possible and desirable, “not only to correct the Hindu fundamentalist version of history as well as what Edward Said identified as ‘Orientalist’ essentialism, but also to reclaim ‘tradition’ from those who have appropriated and instrumentalized it today for political ends.”2
