Liberties There's nothing Artificial about our Intelligence

The great British historian E. P. Thompson once remarked that “India is not an important country, but perhaps the most important country for the future of the world. Here is a country that merits no one’s condescension. All the convergent influences of the world run through this society: Hindu, Moslem, Christian, secular; Stalinist, liberal, Maoist, democratic socialist, Gandhian. There is not a thought that is being thought in the West or East which is not active in some Indian mind.” Some may cavil at his assertion that India is (or ever was) the most important country for the future of the world. But I want rather to endorse Thompson’s other claim — namely, that there has been an astonishing diversity of intellectual opinion in India. This is a product of the country’s size, its cultural heterogeneity, and its daring (if admittedly imperfect) attempt to construct a democratic political system in a deeply hierarchical society. Indeed, among the countries of the so-called Global South, India is notable for the vigor, sophistication, and self-confidence of its intellectual traditions. In this respect it stands out even compared to its larger neighbor China, where the scholarly legacy of the past has been brutally crushed by a totalitarian state.  For too long a significant strand of the Indian intellectual tradition has been neglected: its rich speculations about the past, present, and possible future of human relations with the natural world. The burgeoning contemporary literature on the history of environmentalism is also guilty of this omission, owing to its narrow geographical focus. The challenge to American intellectual hegemony in this field first came from Europe, and what took place there was noticed in America. The traffic of ideas across the Atlantic was intense. Yet the conversation has been conducted as if environmental movements and environmental thinkers