A PRINCELY IMPOSTOR?

The Kumar of Bhawal and theSecret History of

Indian Nationalism

PARTHA CHATIERJEE

AUC"I".lIVE LAW FORUM

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114 CHAPTER SEVEN

years at Bangabasi College in Calcutta and at St. Stephen's College in Delhi.As a student, he had distinguished himself in philosophy and had obtaineda first class M.A. degree in that subject from the University of Calcutta.l9

It is unlikdy that he ever thought that his academic tnining in philosophywould one day have to be mobilized in deciding the most celebrated and,IS it turned out, final c:ase of his career as a judge.

I

ChapttT Eight

THE IDENTITY PUZZLE

~ATCOnstitutesthe identit)· ofa per­son? This is the son: ofquestion that philosophers ponder. Indeed, this spe­cific question has produced a large philosophical literature in the Westernworld at lost since the seventeenth century, following the landmark effonby Rene Descartes to posit a duality herween mind and body and to locatethe self in consciousness., that is, in the faculty of mowing that is indepen­dent of the knower's bodily organs, including the brain. Western philoso­phers have since puzzled over numerous inaicacie:s concerning the preciserole of physical and mental properties in the constitution of the identity ofa person. Most of these debates. especially the ones in recent Anglo-Ameri­can academic philosophy, completely bewilder us ordinary momls. But forOU1' presmt purposes, it is necessary to get a sense of what the theoreticalissues are in determining the identity of. person. The matter is not merelyacademic. During the entire course of the Bhawal sannyasi case through thelawcouru of Dhaka, Calcutta, and London, referen~would often be madeby lawyers, judges, and wimesses to philosophers and philosophical trea­tises that address the question of persO'nal identity. We need not struggle tokeep up with the endless hairsplitting that is the philosopher's normal pro­fessional pnctia:; we will be concerned with what philosophers might haveto tell us, not with what they say to one another.

The recent locus classicus on the subject is Derek Parlit's R,tUOlfS lind Prr­J07U. A renewed debate has been carried OUt by Anglo-American academicphilosophers in the last fifteen years over the issues raised by Parlit con­cerning personal identity. I We will look at some of these recent debates inorder to emphasize what is at stake today in our retelling of the story of theBhawal sannyasi. But of course these were not philosophial discussionsthat Pannalal Basu, subjudge of the Dacca district court, could have knownabout in 1933. He wou!d have mown, from his aademic training, the tra­dition of British philosophy from John Locke and David Hume to earlytwentietii-century philosophers such as J.M.E. McTaggart. We should,therefore, also uke a look at this tradition.

WHAT Is lor:NTITY?

What are the issues involved in determining the identity of a person? Let

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When twO things are identical, they must obey what is called Leibniz.'slaw. This law says that ifx is identical to y, then whatever is true of x mustbe: true ofy, and vice versa. Referring to our case, if the second kumar andthe Bhawal sannyasi are identical, that is, if they are the same person, thenif the second L.-umar was five feet live inches tall, the Bhawal sannyasi mustalso be: five feet five inches tall.

This son of identity is called flumerical identity, where the identity ofxand J means that they are one and the same thing. There can, however, beanother kind of identity, where two things may be: exactly similar withoutbe:ingone and the same thing. If I pick out two new tennis b:llls from a box,one hall could have exactly the same properties as the other, but they wouldstill be different balls. This son of identity is called qyalitarive ideotirr_where x and J are exactly similar because they belong to the same type butthey are not numerically identical. If the second kumar had :In identicaltwin, for instance, who disappeared for a few ~rs and returned as theBhawal sannyasi, then despite having exactly the same features, the secondkumar and the Bhawal sannyasi would still not be the same person. In themUter of the social and legal identity of a person what we usually look foris numerical identity and nor mere qualitjlltive identity.

In our tDmples above, we have, however, skined around the crucial ques·tion ofchange over time. To introduce this dimension into the problem, wemust make the funher distinction between synchronjc identity and dill­.£.hronic identity. Ifx and1 are synchronically identical, then theyare numer­ically identical, that is, they are one and the same thing at a given time t.Thus, James Hamilton Lindsay and the collector of Inca are synchroni­cally identical in the yen 1921. Ifx and y are diachron,ically identical, thenthe relation ofnumerical identity must hold between them over time. Thatis to say, they would be the same temporally enduring thing observed at dif­ferent points of rime. Thus, the boy Ramendra who played pranks with histocher Whanon and the young man Ramendn who accompanied LordKitchener on his hunt were one and the same person at different sta- oflife. I lo-

We can now see where the difficulties would crop up in deciding on nu­merical identity over time. In a world where things change with time, howcan we decide that 10 spite ofobservable qualitative changes, a thing is still~e same? The problem h:ls been posed for Western philosopher.: from theorne of the Greeks. There is the fanlOUS .example of the ship of Theseus,whereby ~ifferent parts of a ship-made of wood iii those days-are grad­ually repaIred and replaced over time until one day every pan has been re­placed; nevertheless, it still remains the same ship. Ifwe think of the humanbody, every cell in it is replaced over time, so that it may be true to say thatno human adult has the same physical body with which he or she was born.But it doo not follow that 1·as-a-ehild Ind I-as-an-adult are not the sameperson. How can we find the proper criteria for detennining the diachronic

116 CIIAPTER EIGHT

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fTHE IDENTITY PUZZLE

identity of persons? Clearly, a lot will depend on how we choose to definethe "person-ness" of persons.

Derek Pamt has listed the quescions that haVe to be asked about the nl­ture of persons and of personal identity over time,2 'f"hsse arc' First, whatis the Danlre of a person? Secon..d..Jrl1ar is..itJhat makes a person auwo..dif-.

f:ili::~n~~~:~;~E'#~~=:~:;,,~:rn~~~'; moral ~r vaIJ!¢;'~pect~dtr'~n ~ddtng a fourth questl~n: Whatis In filet mvolved In the connnu gi.ueng: ora rson.m'cr tiD > eanswer to e mt question would be only part of the answer to the fourth,since what is nuWllriJy involved in the continued existence of:l person neednOt ahaust what is in1m involved in it. Thus being happy, for inst2nce, isnOt necess2rily invoh·-ed in our SUrviV2l, but it may well be p:art of wh:at is infact involved. The introduction of the moral or value dimension also opens

. up the distinctiOQ between the objective aspects ofidentity. ti1ose..tb!!!j)Cr-

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son l1UIy possess because of his or her biol~caland ~alJocation,and thesubjective aspectS. those that he or she may value or identify with. This di­mension is im rttnt for our discussion since we will be dee: I concernedwith the social and le({21 issues of identity..;.

PHYSICAl. CaITUlA OF PEIlSONAL IDENTITY

There Ire twO sortS ofcriteria that are talked ofin deciding questions ,boutthe diachronic identityofpersons: physical aiteria and psychological aitem.

The simplest physical criterion is drawn from static objects that continueto exist over time. Thus. theJaidebpur Rajbari is the same house where thesecond kumar once lived, even though today it accommod.ates • nriety ofgovernment offices of the Gu.ipur district of Bangladesh. The criterionhere is the physical continuity of an object: in spu:e and time. In the case ofsome objects, there can be physical continuity despite considerable physi­cal changes. A butterfly, for instance, can be said to have a continued phys­ial Uistence from an egg to a. caterpillar to a chrysalis to a butterfl.y: in thiscase., the distinct physical fonns are seen as stages in the continuous life ofa single organism.

It is important to clarify what is in\'olved in applying Leibniz's law tophysical criteria of diachronic identity. While researching the story of theBhawtl'sannyasi, I recently read old issues of the weekly l)htilti prolttiJ pre­served in the library of the University ofDhab. The journal now emu inbound annual volumes, the newsprint is yellow, many pages are tom, andthe margins are frayed. I had to tum the pages with great Clution becausethe paper almbst crumbled to dust under my fingers. SiI or seven decadesago, the same issues ofthe joumaI must have had crisp white pages, md theywere not boWld in annual volumes. How can I say that what I was reading

WlI$ an issue of [)bilt. prllkii from 19J4? Surely, applying Leibnil.'s law, itis not correCt to say that everything that was true of the issue of the journalin 1934 is true of it in 1999. If we think it through, however, we will real·iz.e that this would be I misapplication of Leibnil.'s law. Ifx has the prop­erty orbcing white and crisp at time t I andJ is )'ellow and crumbling It time," thlm it could still be the c:ase matxi! identical toy. This is b«ause Leib­niz's law only requires that (or :randy to be identical. ifx is white and crispat '1' theny must 11150 be white and crisp at t" not at II' In other words, therequirement here is that of synchronic identity. To apply it to diachronicidentity, we must decide whether it is possible for the crisp white pages ofx in 1934 to bttome yellow and crumbling in 1999, that is. at a later stagein the life of the same x. If I lim satisfied that there is physical continuity ofthe copy of Dbilti prlJltai over sp:ace and time from the hands of an avidreader of the hearings of the Bhawal sannyasi case in 1934 to the almirahof the old periodicals collection of the University of Dhab library in 1999,then I aC'a'pt that what I have read in 1999 is diachronically identical to thejournal dut was published in 1934.

Can the same thing be said of the: copy I have ofa pamphlet propagatingthe sannyasi's Story? The p:amphJet was printed at Gendaria Press in DhaJc:ain 1921. I first read it in 1995 in a bound volume of "vernacular tnets" inthe Oriental and India Office Collections of the British Library in London.The copy now lying in front of me is a print talcen &om a microfilm of theoriginal p:amphler. I am reasonably certain that the copy that I saw in Lon­don in 1995 was physically continuous with what was printed in Dhab in1921. In any case, the copy was in much better shape than the volumes ofl)bilti prJlltAI at the uni.ersity library in DhaJc:a, undoubtedly because thenumber of people who have handled such material in London in the pastsix or sevm decades is only a small fraction of the number in Dhab. Butthe print taken &om the microfilm is clearly not physically continuous withthe origiml pamphlet. No question of nwnerica.J identity can arise here,even though we might be able to argue for some measure of qualitativeidentity.

~n there be diachronic identity if there are gaps in the physical conti­nwty of an object? I still possess a radio dut works on tubes, DO( transis­tOl'S. We have had it in the bouse for about fifty yeus. It bas had to be re­paired a few times, and I distinctly remember having seen it once at themechanic's shop completely taken apart; it mu.n have been in that State forat least a week. Does the radio have a history of continued physical exis­tence over the last fifty years? Some philosophers would say, no, since it wasnot a radio at every point in its sp:atio--temporal p:ath. Others would say, yes,since even during the week when the radio was taken apart, etch of its sep­arate pans continued to have uninterrupted physica.J existence. Still othenwould say, it doesn't maner if the radio was taken ap:art and put back to-

gether, beca.use even when it was disassembled, it continued to exiSt as aradio.

Applied to persOns, the physical criterion of iClentity is physical continu­ity over time of the same body and brain (brain here being taken u a ph)'S­ical entity). "Same" body ~d brain cannot, of course, mean exact similar­ity at twO points of time, for that would be to ignore nonnal and naturalprocesses of change. What is necessary is not the continued exiStence of thewhole body, or even of the whole brain. It is possible to think of a personcontinuing to exist even after losing several partS of his or her body. Whatis minimally required is the survival ofenough of the brain to be the brainofa living person. This is what physical survival ntcmnily involves; the con­tinued mstence of other parts of the body is strictly not necessary. Thephysical criterion lays down, then, that x at '1 is the same person as1 at t1if and only if enough ofx's brain survives at t l' and has the capacity to sup­port a full human consciousness, and is now y's brain; and if no other per­son z e.Dsts at '1 who also hu enough of r's brain to support a full humanconsciousness.J

We should emphasize that philosophers ",ho accept the physical crite­rion of personal identitY actually mean by it the continued existence of thebrain as a physical entity. They do not regard other parts of the human bodyas equally significant, because those could change or even ceak to existwithout necessarily disturbing the continued exisre.nce of the person. In thephysical sense., then, the essential attribute of personhood lies in the brain.

It is also necessary for us to note q.,at the way in which the physial cri­terion hu been defined in the philosophical discussion makes it \.'ery diffi­cult to thinkofenemal checlcs to verify whether or not the criterion is beingmet in a particular case. This is because the entire debate over personalidentity bas taken place around the question of "the self." As we will seebelow, the typical fonn of posing the problem has been: "If my brain istransported or tnnsfonned in such and such a way, then what would be theimplication for me as a person?" This does not, however, give us a praeti­caJ criterion for deciding a problem such as that of the Bhawal sannyasi.How could anyone verify if a substantial part of the second kumar's brainsurvived in the sannyasi? It is not difficult to see why, when the question ofphyslca.J. rc:semblaner between the Icunw- and the sannyasi came up in court,

it was not the physica.J bn.in but various physical features and ma.rb on thebody that were offered as criteria. Each of thc:sc: was hotly debated, becausethe question could always be asked u to whether a particular physical fea­ture might not change over time without destrO)'ing the continued physi­cal existence of the person. In a fundamental sense, then, the philosophersare right apart from the sumnl ofenough of the brain. the continuity orotherwise ofother pans of the body does not give us a necessary physica.Jcriterion of personal identity. Nevenheless, it is not hard to see why the

118 CHAPTER EIGHT THE IDENTITV PUZZLE 119

PSYCHOLOGICAL C.'TIaIA Of PUSONAL loENTITY

common sense of·ordinary people would seek such resembl:mas in order[Q decide whether or not the sannyasi was really the second kumar.

We have observed before that a key question that comes up in the applica­tion ofLeibnil.'s law to the di:oachronic Klentityofpersons. th:u is, their iden­tity over time, is what we take to be the essential n:lture ofperwns. 10 otherwords, we have to provide some answer to the question, "What constirutesthe person-ness of persons?- A large number of:msw~dut have been sug­gested by philosophers concerns the menul or psychological properties ofhuman beings. Oearly, there is :I strong tendency hur: to seek the essenceof the hunun person in his or her rational, moral, and affective &cuJties,which are seen as being integral parts of his or her mmtal or psychologicalattributes.

The cbssic Cannulation of the mental or psychological criterion of per­sorulldentity in modem Western ptulosopny was DUde by John Locke inhU e-, Omm-ning H-. ~t{l690). .

fIlo find wherein penonal identiry consi:su, ~ must consider what penonstands for, which, I think. is 1 thinIrin« inlelligcnt being, Wt has reason andreflection, and can consider itsdfas iudl, the same thinking thin, in differenttimes and places; which it docs only by thJl 0XlICi0usness which is inscpln­ble &om thinIdn" and, IS it seems to me. essential to it. ••. For since con­sciousness always aa:ompanies thinkins, and it is tb:u which makes eYCf}' onettl be what be calls Idf, and thereby distinguishes bimsdf from all other think·ins things; in this alone consists penooal identity, i.e. the sameJle55 ofa ratio­nal being; and as far IS this a:msciousness cut be enended backwards w anypast action or thought, 10 far reacbcs the identity ofWt person; it is die samesdf DOW it was then; and it is by the same self wid! this present one that nowreflects on it, that that action was done.·

Locke's criterion of personaJ identity is. therefore, the possession ofan unin·telTupted flow ofself-conscious awareness, that is to say, memory. But Lockemakes a distinction here between "person." which refers to the bearer of1lI ra­tional and reflective consciousness., and "man,'" which is a biological entity.The criterion for detennining the identity of a person is not necessarily thesame as that for detennining the identity of a man. He illustrates this withone of his most-quoted examples, which is in some ways a precursor to the"thought experiments" of later philosophers writing on the subject.

(Sjhould the soul of. prince, C'If'I)'ing with it the consciousness of the prince'spast life, enter and infonn the body of. cobbler, IS soon IS deserted by his ownsoul, every one sea he would be the same person with me prince, accowuable

121THE IDENTITY PUZZLE

so I cntJ .If there is no memo re is no identi .e's theory gives us a simple and verifiable criterion to decide ques­

tions of identity. It is easy to show that, in this simple form, it is not a veryreliable criterion. however. What does it mean to say that for x at t I to bethe same person as 1 at ~,J must have the memory of ha~ng the experi­ences orx at t I? Surely, ifI am asked to umember my expen~nceson a ~­tain date some twenry--five years ago, it is very likely that I WIll not remem·bu\a single thing. Even in were asked about something more recent, su~as which time or the day I wrote a particular paragraph iii few pa~ ~rherin this book, I might still be unable to remember, By Locke's cntenon, Iwould have to concede that I am no longer the slime person that I wastwenty-five years ago, or even last week'

\Vhen we say, following Locke, that to be the same person one must havethe memory of one's pa51l::xperiences, we cannot mean all of ~ne's past e.x­peritnces. That would be to insist that om; cannot for&et iilD~mg. Th7dlf·ficulty is to decide how much go be forgotten without losmg one's ,den­ti . If the Bhawtl sann si daimed that bec:a of the a$$a e of ears he

a orgotten.everything of the experiences of his life as the ~~nd lrumar,would that be credible? Supposing we were to relax the requirement andsa)" that he ought to remember at least some of those experiences, how

only for the prince's actions; but who would say it W'lS the same man? ... IIenow that, in the ordinal)' W'ly of spealcing, the same penon, and the sameman, stand for onc and the same thing.... Bm yet when we will inquire whatmakes the same spirit, man, or person, we must fiJ: the ideas of spirit, man, orperson in our minds; and having resolved with ounclvC5 wha~ we mean.~them, it will not be hard to dettnnine in either of mem, Of the like, when It IS

the same, and when not.'

It should~ clarified that in locating the essence of personal identity inthe uninterrupted existence of self-conscious awareness, Locke is nOl en·dorsing the Cartesian idea that persons arc essentially disembodied souls.In fact, Locke specifically contnldicts the Cartesian formulation, withoutexplicidy denying-perhaps to ensure the ~fetyofms own bodily life-:-theimmortaliry- of souls. Using another oft-quoted example, he says that If themayor or Queensborough happens to have whu was once the soul orSocrates, but hu no memory or being Socntes and of having his experi­ences, then, soul or no soul, the mayor is not the same person as Socrates.This is because we have no way ofattaining any knowledge of the soul; it isbeyond our consciousness and cannot constitute the essence of rational andthinking persons. Unlike Descartes, theufore, Locke is not claiming thathwnan consciousness or memory resides in some indesuuctible thinkingsubstance that nukes up the soul Wherqs Descartes would say dJU mern.o could on! discover the identi fan a' stituted the

is sa 'n that co n or memo is con 0 r·

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CHAPTER EIGHT120

122 CHAPTER EIGHT

ITHE IDENTITY PUZZLE 12l

much would be enough to e5ublish identity? If his memory of the particu­lar eventS thlt he did rememl:M:r wert to be probed by cross.cnmination,and jf he claimed th:H his memory W:lIS ronfused or unecmin would thudestroy the case for identity? '

The trouble is that Locke's criterion is not supple enough to tackle thecomplexity of the psychological processes of memory. Recent philosophershave attempted to improve on Locke's effon. Partir has proposed a conceptof psychological connectedness thar is morc complex than the simple no­tion of the memol')~ of past ex~rience. I may be able [0 remember todaysome of the expe.riences that I had twenty-five years ago. These would bedircc:: memory oonnettions m:olt would meet Locke's criterion. But even ifI did not have any such direa: memories, there could still be continuity ofmemory over these twenty-five years. This would be the case if there wasan overlapping chain ofdirect memory connections. Thus, from one day tothe nut, most peopl~ remember some of thdr c.xpcrienct:S on th~ praiousday. Between a time-point'l and, let us say, a time-point '100' a person at, 100 may forgetevtrything that he aperienced U 'I" But he would hav~ n:­membered many of those experiences of,I n'1 Oct us say, the foUowingday); many ofrus expcrienct:S of'l' he would have remembered at tli andso on to '100' So then: could be an overlapping chain of memories from ,to '100· Between one time-point and the nut, say one day and the nen:th~n: could be many direc:t connections or very few. Parlit suggests that ifat least half the number of direct connections thu hold over every day inthe Ji~ of most actual persons are preserved until It I«st the next day,there lS strong connectedness. He then defines psychological continuity:ll5the holding of overlapping ~hains of StrOng connectedness. The psycho­I . I criterion of rsonal identi can then be stated' as farrows: x at' is

e same person as rat ,) if and only i x lS psychologtcal yc:ontinuous wUh­L and with no other person.:z:; at ,]"

It is interesting to note that in Pamt's scheme, strong connectedness it­selfcannot be the criterion of identity. The person y today may be stronglyconnected to herselfyesterday, when she was Strongly cOnnected to herselfthe d2y befor-e, and so on. But this does not mean that she is strongfy con­nected to herself twenty-five years ago. Does this mean thatytoday is a dif­ferentp:rson from y twenty-five years ago? To draw that conclusion wouldbe to repeat the error involved in Locke's simple mtmon. Pamt avoids theerror by maldng psychological continuity rather than connectedness th~criterion of personal identity.

How is psychological continuity maint:2ined? Taken in the narrow sense,psychological continuity can only have a nomul cause. 1Pus, if I seem toremember having an experience only after it was suggested to me that I had~t experience, then I did not Ictually remember it in the normal way. ThatI~ to say, my appan:nt memory is not causally dependent on my past upe_nenee but rather on the suggestion that I had that uperience. In the nar-

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row interpretation, there is no psychological continuity hen:. The samegoes for changes in character. If the Bhawal sann)'2si displays a radically dif­ferent ch:lraclcr from the second kumar, then it would have to be shownthat this was the nonnal col\SCquence of having led a radically different lifefor twelve yean; otherwise, there would be no psychological continuity.Evcn if someone were to disp1:ly cxtraordinary lapses of memory aboutone's past experiences, this could be because of the normal consequences ofa condition such as amnesia. In that case, even the absence of memory maybe regarded as nOI threatening psychological continuity, and hence per­sonal identity, as mainuincd by nonn:ll causes. As we will see later, amne­sia was a major point at issue in the Bh:lwal sannyasi case.

J( we accept th~ narrow interpret2tion of ps}'chological continuity, thepsychological criterion coincides in most cases with the physical criterion.The nonnal causes of psychological continuity essentially imply the con­tinued physical existence of the brain. Even when a person is suffering fromamnesia, it is a consequence of the malfunctioning, caused by injury or dis­ease (neurosis) or decay, of his brain. We could say then that a test of psy­chological continuity might serve justas well as an indicatorofphysical con­tirluity. Questions of memory and character would figure very prominentlyin the hearings and arguments of the Bhawal case.

In the wider interpretations of psychological continuity, not only nonnalcauses but any reliable cause, or indeed any cause, is considered acceptablefor maintaining psychological continuity, and hence for establishing per­sonal identity. The examples philosopherYusc to pose the choice betweenthe narrow and the wide interpretations usually involve ..thought experi­mans· when: drastic confusions arise in matching brains with bodies. Wewill look at some of these cases presendy. But the implication of the choiceis that in the wider interpretation, even if psychological continuity bela anormal cause, any other cause, so long as it can be established as a cause,would be considered just as good. Thus., if the Bh:lw:al sannyui's loss ofmemory of large parts of his alleged life as the second kwnar does not ap­pear to have a normal cause, then any other cause, such as a shock with un­known Consequencc:s or the mysterious ~cinesgiven to him by the Nagasadhus who rcsc:ucd him, would be consi<kred acceptable for establishingpsychological continuity. CI«rly, it would make a lot of difference whichinterpretation of the psychological criterion is accepted. The choice, as wewill now sec., hinges on certain ethical or v:due considerations sulTOUndingthe iss\le of personal identity.

DoES W£NTTTY MA.1TtR?

To get a flavor ofhow the moral-philosophical problems ofidentity are posedand arulyud, Itt w consider a f:a.mow "thought experiment" described by

Bernard Williams.6 Suppose two ~rsonsA and 8 undergo an experimentin which their entire memories, character traits, and other mentlll ch.anc­tcristics are recorded and then switched. All of the mental properties ofA'sbrain are now realized in B's brain, and vice versa. What was once A's bodynow hu a br.ain with D's memories and char:ieteristics; what was once D'sbody now has a brain with A's memories and characteristics. Let us Clilll thefirst the A-body person and the second the B-body person. The question is:who should we consider the nme temponJly continuous person with A­the A-body person or the B-body puson?

To analyu the question, Williams adds a twist to the experiment. Let usalso suppose, he says, that before the operation, A and B are told th.u oneof the postoperation persons would be paid a large sum of money and meother tortured, and thatA and Bcould choose which person they wouJd liketo be rewarded and which tortured. It is plausible to 2I"gUe th:n since A andB know that their minds and bodies will be swapped, A would choose thatthe B-body person be rewmted and the A-body person tormred, and Bwould choose the opposite. Now suppose.,the uperimenter goes ahead withthe operations and then reWllCds theA-t¥>dy penon and tortures the B.bodyperson. The B·body person, now tuving the memories ofA, will then jus.tifiably complain that his choice was not respected, while the A-body per.son, having the memories ofB, will thank the experimenter for having actedaccording to his wishes. We can then conclude that the B·body person isthe same person as A and the A-body person the same person as B.N~ ~nsider another thought experiment: I am captured by a mad neu.

rosoentlSt,and told that my body would be subj«ted to torture, but beforethat my aund would be erased ofall my memories and character traits andreplaced by the memories and traits ofanother person. How would I feel?Would I n~t be afraid of being tortured? But why should I, since the per­son who wIll be tortured would have somebody else's mind? That wouldpr?bably actually ~crease my anxiety, because DOt only would I be afraid ofbeing tortured but would also wony about the strange t;hings that will bedone to my mind. Mostcrucially, during all of these trlIumatic moments be­fore the operati~n. I would remain convinced that everything that wouldtu~ both dunng and after the operation would tuppen to 1m.

This produces an antinomy. The second aperiment is actually only analternanve description of the first esperiment, the difference being that in.stead ofa neutral third-person account, it is natrlted in the first person. Butwhereas th~ first experiment convinced us that the preoperation A and thepostoperanon A-body person were different persons, the ~cond experi­m.ent seems to persuade: us that, opention or no operation, it is still me thatwIll undergo the trauma of torture.

A great dea~ has been written about the dilemma posed by Williams, andmany suggesuons tuve been made to resolve iL? We need not spend time

here going into the mind·boggling complexities of.thi~ liten~, whichs«ms to reserve a special place for the mad neurosoenust and hiS endlessattempts to dupliate, split, or otherwise manip~lat~ brains an? swap theirlocations in different bodies. For our purposes, It WIll be suffiCient to note,first, that on the moral implications of the question of personal id<'.'11tity,there are two broad approaches caUed the reductionist an~ che nonreduc­tioniSt; and second, that cutting through that debate, there. LS D~rek Parol'sradical suggestion that what really ma.tten is nor personalldennty but psy.chological continuity with Il7tJ kind ofcause. . .

The reductionists basically uphold some version of the physical and/orpsychological criteria we have described before. They maintain, in otherwords, that personal identity involves. the con?n~ed p.hysical ~see~ce ofenough of the brain and/or psycholOgical contmUity WIth the fight lcind ofcause. Pamt, as we have already noted, prefers to modify this position byholding that any cause is sufficienL In contnst, no~eduetionistsdo ~ot ac­cept that personal identity can be reduced to cerum bets about phYSical.orpsychological continuity. They insist that the ide~tityofa ~rson mUSt ~­valve a funher net. This could be a sepa~te entity from his or her bram2nd body, such as a wrteSian spiritual substance, for instance, or 2 separatephysical entity not yet recognized by .science, or at the vel)' least, some­thing beyond the sum total of elements comprising the body and brain ofthe person.

Pamt attempts to show that no matter how.careful.ly w~ de6~e p~ysi~1and psychological mntinuiry, it is always posSIble to U1~agJne Sl[llltl~ns mwhich persoll21 identitywill be indeterminate and undeCIdable accordmg tothe reduetionist criteria. He condudes from this that what ma.ttcn is notpersona.! identity but continuity or a person in some fonn, that is, the per­son's $Orvin!. Thus, if there was some teehnology th2t could TeCOrd theexact state ofall of the cells of my body:rnd brain and reproduce those cellsin an enct duplicate of me, that duplicate would be exacdy~ m~ bothph~callyand psychologically, with an exactly similar body and WIth the~ memories md personality traits. Now, if it was suggested ~o me thatthe origiml"I" be destroyed and the duplicate survive, would I mmd? Pame2fgues that nothing would be lost if due was to tuppen. ~etheror, no~ 1survive in my original body, my physical and psycholOgIcal continUitywould be maint2inc:d JUSt 2S well in my duplicate.

Though avidly discussed, Pamt's suggestion has not been wid.e1y ap­proved. To many, it has seemed tOO radical a proposal chat goes agalOst ~egrain of conventional assumptions. Once again, if we shift the perspe~ve

from a 6rst-person account to a third·person account, th~ m?ra.l chOIcesappear to become very different. Peter Unger asks us to smagtne how hewould feel if it was suggested to him that his wife Susan be replaced by:rnexact duplicate. Ungu says that like most other people, he would refuse to

"4 CHAPTER EIGHT

,

1

TilE IDENTITY PUZZLE '"

accept any s,uch pro~1. "Ev:i~endy. I do not.just care about the very manyhighly specific qwhnes my wife has.... Quite beyond any of that, I careabout the one particular person who is my wife; I care about Susan and aswell, I care about the continuance: of my puticuJar relationship with he:....'Unger, therefore, i.s insis~g ~2t .what matten in sUJ"Vival is not just phys­tell and psychologJcaJ connnwty In some manner ot fonn but the identityaCme particul:u individUJ1 th:n weV2Jue and identify with. It is not true thatin our actual and ordinary preferences, we are indifferent between h:avinga relationship with a' particular person and his or her enct duplicate.

We have now rome to a crucial point in our discussion of the moral andphilosophical issues surrounding the BhaWlilI sannyasi case. The dominanttendency in the legal approach to the question of identity, ~ we h;.ve aJ­rea~ l1£Ked, is the narrowone th2t insists on physical and psychologicalcontinuity based on normal ause; that an be demonstrllted and verifiedby sciiiitific methods. Could there :also be:a Parfit-like view th:at pl:aces lessemph:lSi'SOrt the demonsmtion of identity :and tre:ats more seriously thequestion of survival?"Reall th:at the question was :actu:ally posed :lner thedecision of the Calcutt:l High Court, on ilie :appeal in the defamuion suit,Suren Mukherjee, a prominent l:awyer in'the S:lIUlyasi's amp, h:ad decl:aredth:at it did not m:attel' if the court decided th:at the smnyasi's story h:ad notbeen borne out by sufficient scientific evidence. Most of the Iromar's rela­tives and all of the prominent people as well as th; peasant!: of Bh:awal b:adaccepted the smn i as the second kumar, If we ut this in the hiloso h-I temuno 0 we ha\"e introduced in this cba er, we sa:at thesannyasJ succeeded to most of the socia D ps 0 e second~, and that the physical:and psycholQliwcootinwtvofthekumar h:ad

..been ac:oomplished, whateVer the cause.ln other words. the kumar had sur­!.Md m the sannyasi.

"!bere COUld) ofcourse, also be:an Unger-type objection to this claim, anobj~on~twould come quite close to:l. nonreduetionist argument. With:a slight twISt ofthe philosophical imagin:ation, we could think ofBibhflbati,the second rani.:as putting forward exactly this objectior:L What did it mat­h:r to her if all of .Bhaw:al thought th:lt the second hmw- had survived inthe sann~? She ~y VJ1ued the particular relationship that she had ac­cepted ~th th.e partlcuJ~ perso~ who wu her huslwld. An eDIct duplicate,to conunue WIth our philosophlal usage, was simply not good enough.

'What about the ~~emm~t?This question dem:ands a more compH­~t~d answer. The B.nush offiCIals, both in the administntion :and in the ju­dICIary, would ~rtalDly .have insisted on a clear demonsmtion of physiC:l1and psycholDglcal conbJlUlty under nonnal causes lverined by scientificn:'ethods. They woul~ have been app:alled by the suggestion that the sur­VIval of the person by any" allSe wu sufficient. That, to them would havemeant granting a token ofapproval to the rutive fondness for ~racles. But

I believe"that my claims apply to all people, at all times. It would be disturb­ing to discover that they are merely part of one line of thought, in the cultureof,Modem Europe and America.

Fortunately, this is not true. I claim that, when we ask what persons are, andhow they continue to exist, the fundamenal question is a choice between twOviews. On one view, we are scpantely aiRing entities, diJtinet from our brtinand bodies 1M our experiences, Ind entities whose existence mU5t be all-or-­nothing. The other view is the Reductionist View. And I claim that, of thek,

127

I

THE IDENTITY PUZZLE

an important change W:lS t:lking place in the very composition of the ad·ministration and the judiciary beause of the rapid induction of Indian of­ficers and judges in the 19205 and 19305. Thde were men who :we« DOL

only well trained in British :administrative and lepl doctrines :and ~racticc:s

bUt alSO d«l)1v imbued with the ideas of Western modernity that ~ hadencountered in their school and universitY education. But th~ ha alsogrown up with the: itf;1de of nationalism. Would tha ave aqy:.efFeet onWf):at .th~iOOld re thuigln.criteria and the accept:lble evtdence ofidenuty. Let us make a no~ of this question' will answer it later.---neforewe move on, we should also note thu in the Anglo-Amerianphilo.sophicalli~ratureon personal identity, Par6t is regarded as a radical.This is beause by undennining thc importance given to the issue of iden·tity, he l:aunches into a trenchant critique of the utilitari:an assumptions ofindividu:al seif-inteust on which most of English-language moral philoso­phy rests. To the.. charge that his claim is counterintuitive :and conmry toconventional usage, Pamt would reply that that is bec:l.use conventionalusage is based on false :and imtional beliefs. "The truth is very differentfrom what we:are inclined to believe," he declues.9 The attempt to :asserta nonreductionist position against Pamt, such :as that by Unger, thus be·comes an avowedly conse;rvative project, namely, to describe and defend theactual values and beliefs ofordin:ary people regarding identity :and survival.

These "actual" values and beliefs of "ordinary" people are, of count,deeply bound to p:articular O1ltural conditions, This is something that is en­tirely unrcoogniud in the Angio-Arnerian philosophica1literawre. tied uit is to:a universalist style of :argum~tltion.even when it seeks to do a phe­nomenology of everyday life. When it is asserted that ordina intuitionplaces an irreducible nlue on - I b on "cube relation-

ps W1 'cular m the OYttWhelmin nwnber ofamp gJven are those of relations within the immediate nuclear &mil itI$e:lSlY thatinothercu1 rommonsensemi twellalU'l te ve different values to n rei .a t P:arnt's radic:alJy :antiutilitarian ideas are expJicidy inOu­eaced by Buddhist docttines of selfhood, from which, however, he drawsentirely universalist conclusions.

CHAPTER EIGHT126

"UATIVE loENTfTY: SAMENESS AND SELfHOOD

It is de2( th:u even radicals within the Anglo-Americ:an tndilion of philos­ophy would ste<ldf2StJy resist the idea ofa culrunl hislOry of rruth.

the serond view is mit:•... Buddha 1lJf1U1J hllN agTrtJ. The ReducrioniSI Viewis nOl merely i»rt of onc culturallNdition. It m:ay be, as I have daimed, the[ruc view about all people at all times. IO

129TilE IDENTITY PUZZLE

reidentification depends nOt only on numerical and qualitative identity butalso on an understanding of uninterrupted continuity and permanence intime. \¥hen a chil'llCler is established, "the satneness of the person is des­ignated emblematically." That is to say, it "design:ues the set of lasting dis·positions by which a person is recognized. In this way character is able to

constitute the limit point where the problematic of IPJt becomes indis­cernible from that ofiJmr, and where one is inclined not to distinguish themfrom one another.>tU

The concept of chal'llctcr embedded in narrative gives stability to per­sonal identity. A chal'llcter inevitably has a history in which it acquires newtraits and dispositions, often brought about through a sequence of eventsthat induces the chal'llcter to innoV2te. These innovations aCCtlmulate andlea"'e a ~diment in the character, which thus acquires a pennanence bywhich it can be reidentified despite changes brought about by events. It ishere that sameness and sdfhood m·etlap. When one thinks one knows theset of pennanent traits that belong to a character, one can reidentify it asthe SInPU person and, from the same evidence, also argue that those tr2itsconstinlte a further fact, designating the st/f, not rroucible to the body andbrain of the person.

To locate the problem of identity in IUIrrative is a crucial move, becauseit shifts the focus from experience and memory to accountS ofevents. Theissues of physical and psychological continuity would ofcourse remain, butnow the narntive of events in the history of our real or fictional characterwould seek to u:pUm changes in chara~ as Clused by the impact of thoseevents. Not only t,hat, Ricocur also (Ktint:S out that no namtive is morallyneutral. Even as it desaibes the actions of its characters, a story invites thereader or listener tojrdgr those actions. The functions ofdescription, per­suasion, and prescription are fused together in narrative.

It is not difficult to see why the move to namtive identity becomes rel­evant for us in dealing with the material of the Bhawal sannyasi ca~. Wehave pointed out the difficulty in applying the physical or psychological cri­teria of identity to the case ofthe sannyasi. How on earth could anyone ver­ify if enough of the second Irumac's brain survived in the sannyasi for himto have remembered over every day between 1909 and 1933 at least half thenumber of things that most people normally rememocr over each day? In·evitably, then, the procedure would end up in comparing physical features,identifying bodily marks, matching chal'llcttr tr2its, and setting tests ofmem0'lt to serve as indices of physical and psychological continuity. Ap­pa~ntdiscrepancies would be explained precisely by describing II narrativeofevents that would causally link the chanp in physical or psychologicalchal'lltter to those events. Those proclaiming the truth of the sannyasi'sstory would narrate the events in such a way as to preserve the integrity ofthe character of the second kumar, asserting its continued existence into his

ICHAPTER F.IGH"r128

The French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, who comes from the Europe:m phe­nomenologial and henneneutic tn:dition, MS rea:ndy attempted to tnm­.scend the impasse posed by the reductionist and nonccductionist ap­pro:llchc:s to the question ofidenti[)' by introducing me concept ofnarr.lti\'cidentity. II RicoaIr focuses on N'O very different Roses of the: term iden­tity. The first is identity as s:ameness, which tS derive'd from the Latin idrm.Both numerical and qWllit20ve identity refer to this sense of me: tenn. infact, me: entire ~ductionistappro:llch in all iu variantS may~ s«;n as a WlIyto dc:tenninc: personal identity in the senSe of sa~ess. But thue is an­oth~.sense in which the word identity is used in the European languages.nus IS the sense ofse!£hood, deriving from the Latin ipg. The puuJes andparadoxes posed in the Anglo-American analytical literature: from the time?f J...o:e*e ~d Hume are, says Rice:xur, the result ofconfbting one~ ofIdenbty With the other. When nonreduetionists tlIk of identity that cannotbe reduced to the body and brain, they mean sellhood in a sense: that is nOtJUSt sameness. The two senses must be distinguished if one wishes to avoidthe confusing antinomies that come up so frequently in the literature:. Yet,~Itbough sameness and selfhood must be distinguisbed, they clearly occurm tan~em, closelyconn~ to each other. How -are we to distinguisb themand Shll hold on to the Idea that they are two senses of the notion of per.sonal identity?

Ri~ur.suggests thu sameness and selfhood come together in narrative.The cotena of sameness over time have to be flexible enougb, as we haveseen, to a~mmod.ate.changes that do not destroy the essential physical orpsychol~g1cal conbnwty of a person. This means that there is opel'lltinghere an. Idea of structure, something that endures over time, while changesare. registered and.explained in tenos n(events. This is precisely what nar­I'lItlVes do-dl!SCTlbe the continuity of structures through a sequence of~ents. In the case of personal identity, the rel~vant narrative forms are lifehistory and liction, in both of which the two senses ofidentity-samenessand selfhood--c:ome together in the idea of chal'lleter. Character consistsof"th fd··· •... ..e seta ISbnCbve mar~ which permit the reidentification ofa humanIndwldual as being the same."12 As is clear from narratiye stnuegies, this

lif~ as :II sannyasi :md th~n as the plaintiff, despite all the changes brought:lbom by his eventful life Th~ denying the truth of that story would at·tempt to show that the changes were too drastic to be: accommodated withinthe life history ofthe same character, that the proffcr~ explanations stretchedthe n2rnuve beyond the limits of the credible.

\\'hat we an expect then are rival narratives. They will differ not becausethey will be different descriptions of !.he same events. Rather, by offeringdifferent ausal connections ~tween evenrs and physial or psychologicalchange, and by asserting different constructions of the selfhood of the ch:ar­aetcr, th~ rinl narntives would present ,-ery different emplonnents ofevents over time. NO[ only that, they could also appeal to different criteriaofwhat is plausible or credible in:ll narr.ui,oc. None ofthese can be assumed.

Despite Ricoeur's :attempt to bring mgether tht: reduetioniSt and nann.duetionist claims within a dialectical conception of the narrati ...e, the puz.zJes posed by the philosophical literature on identity are not by any meansremoved. Ricoeur is able to attribute a cenain stability to the concept ofthecharacter, evolving through time by a eumulation of sedimented changethat qualifies and enriches it without destroying its pennanent structure,largely because he assumes the stability of the position of the narrator who"knows· the Story. To :lI certain extent, this results From Ricoeur's concern~th 6~on:ll1 n:llrntive, both literary fiction :lind science fiction, :liS provid­rng an tmportllnt corpus of"thought uperiment" :accounts that throw lighton the problenuofdetermining penon:lll identity. But whu about situationsin which the nuntor does not h:ll ...e control over his n:llrntive? Thinle ofour sinution with the story of the Bh:llW:ll.I nnnyasi. Who is our ch:llracter?Do we even have:ll name fOr him? Ever since his rerum to]:lIidebpur in 1921:lind his subsequent claim to the personhood of the second lcumn we haveh:lld to nurate his story under the sign of a question mark.. This i; becausewe Iu....e chosen to respect the conventions of historical n:llrrative and notarTOg:lIte to oursel...es:ll control over the destiny ofour c:haraeters that is not

~~ by the eridmce before us. How can we speaIc persuasively oftheOOl1DnWty ofthe lcurrw--sannyui dunctttwhen we,:as hiStorians ofms lifeC:llUIOt :lIvoid confronting the undecidability of his identity? '~e can .also~ thu despite the facility afforded by the namative con­

cepoo.n oft~e~oty, the challenge posed by Pufit's ndical suggestion-per­~n:lll tdenntr 1$ not wh2t m:lltters-annot be easily :lInswered. E...en :lifterRicocur's valiant :lIttempt to integnte a nonreduetionistview ofthe selfwith~e reduetionist emph:llsis on Sameness, he concedes th2t in some ofthe Iim­long cases described in litenry :lIccounti, identity does become undecid­able. Should we not ny then thu Pu6t is right? Ricoeur resists this move.B~t ~e does :lICttpt that.the monl found:lltion of selfhood in the "owner­~P ~ a penon over his or her memories, :lIetions, and feelings is flawed.In a philosophy ofsc:lfhood lilce my own, one must be 2ble to ny that GWn-

lotNTlTY ANO RtcOGNITION: INOICENOUS NunONS?

There is one more upect. of this phiJosophial nUltter thu we should co.n­sider, because it will lave I bearing on some of the legal deb2tes th2t anse

IIITHE IDENTITY PUZZLf

ership is not whu m:lltters. What is suggested by me limiting cases pro·duced by the n:llmati...e im2gin:lltion is ~ dialttti.c of ownership and dispos­session, ofcare :lind carefreeness, 2self-:lIffinnation and self-ef'hcement. Thusthe im:llgined nothingness of the self becomes the existenc:lIl 'crisis' of theself,·'"

Does this help us in our narr:liU...e predicament? C:lIn we speak :lIbout theproblems of detennining the identity of the sanny:llsi as an existential crisisof the self? To begin with, direct :lIccounts of the S:lInny:llsi expliating theinner workings ofms self are miniscule. The o ...erwhelming bulk of the nn·nyasi's story is in the form of narratives construettd by others-rel:llti...es,friends, usociues, supponers, witnesses, 2nd I:lIwyers. Gi en whu is ani!-2ble to us as evidence, we luve to admit that ~ speculati e eIerOse on theaistenrial oisis of the self of the lrumar-nnnyasi is not the most interest­ing historical task before us. We must not, however, forget that the ques­tion of self-reg:llrding:and other-reg:llrding oiteria of identity h:as been :lI1­

. ready introduced into our case. One p!:lInk of the sannY:llsi's Story W:lIS th.ec1:l1im th:llt he had been recognized and :lICttpted as the second lrumar by hiSrebti...es, his friends and :lIcquaintances, and by the ten:llnts of his estlltt:. Thesecond lrumu, 25 he was regarded by others. lad survived in the smnY:llsi.So·why bother any more :lIbout identity? Ofcourse, it was objected th2t h~s

wife, the second rani, h:lld not recognir..ed him and had refused to :lIccept hiSstory. But this, the smnyui's supporters said, was because of her n2~wself.interest. She was refusing to accept wh2t everyone else h:lld recognizedbecause it was in her interest to maiptain the legal statuS quo.

Can we accept this? Is it nir to ny that whereas the S:lInnyasi's story putforward a pl2usible case for going beyond the limits of individu:lli interestto recognize the collective wisdom of:ll luger community of people who,so to S:lIy. constiruted the site for locating the soci:ll\ person:ll of the lrumar,the rani was bent on obstructing this course because of her nuTOW self­interest? Did she not constitute:ll aucia1 part of the "others" of the Irum2r?Should we not recognize Wt it is possible for a collective consensus to beopptessive and unjust for some? What ue we to do when the collective bodyof "others· is marked by radical conHiet? It is not 2 situation that in~egn­rive theories such:as Ricoeur's can handle very weU. As for us, prepanng to

unfold the story of the tri:lll :lind its senS:lltion:lll conclusion, we lu.ve to 2e­cept for the time being the fact that the problems posed by the cue of theBhaW:li1 S:lInnyasi rem2in deeply puwing.

JL.-- _

CHAPTER EIGIlTno

son-me legal or social agent-who is nothing other than the psyeho­physiC:lI body, is nOt self-conscious, for this empirical person could act with­out knowing it, unselfconsciously. Self-consciousness comes only when thepsychophysical body is united with the objective consciousness called atnl:ln,

Thus. although there is definitely t concept of me concrete person thatactS in the empirical world and is reducible to a physical-~~olDg1cal en·tity, it occupies an inferior position in the hienrchy of Indan Ide:as of self·hood, Ideas of the knowing subject with objective :lnd univ~rsal conscious­ness have much gre:lter philosophical, and on~ might S:ly. e:.:ul~r:tl, '':llue.Contemponry social historians oflndia might argue that this hler-..rchy ofideas of selfhood probably reflects the cultural dominance of Bnhminicalvalues in Indian intellcetuallife,l6

Second, coming to the problem of recognition, it is necess<llry to note thatno school of Indian philosophy recognizes memory (smrri) as :l source oftrue cognition (Jrr:tmui1)4).17 There are many reasons given for rbi,S. For in­stance, it is said that whereas perception makes itS object ImO....'ll wlmout re­ducing it to other causes. memory can onl)' rC\'e:ll itS object by awakeningtl'2ces (~sJtirtl) of past experience. This always I~\'cs room for doubt(sltrliltyll). Other philosophers S:ly that memory cannot yield knowledge ofany kind, because the p:ast experience that is its object is no longer there­it docs not exiSL Ifwe leave aside these extreme views. it remains a fact thateven those schooJs that gnnt some role to memory consider it an imper­fect and inferior mode of knowledge,

To consider a problem Wt is dirttdy relev:ant for uS, let us look at thelogical treatment by the Nyiya philosophers offJ"lItyllbbiftii or recognition.Recognition, they S:ly, is different from m~mory. Memory is a revival of apast experience a.nd t2kcs the fonn ofa representation of ideas and imagesin the same form and order in which they were experi~nced in the pasLRecognition. on the other hand, is a qualified perception that is broughtabout by the direct cognition (",uhbITVII) of an object but also involves anclement of representation in the form of traces of p2St experience ~.stirll). Recognition, therefore, unli.kt memory itself, could yield some sonofqualibed true cogrution.

Let us first examine memory. The reuon why memory awakens a pastexperience is bcca.use latent impressions or traces of that experience are re­tained in the soul (itmllj. (It is significant that the place where impressionsare retained is the solll, which most schools of philosophy accept as inde­~Ie; this means that impressions may be transmitted from one bio­logical life to another, which allows some people to remember some expe­riences from a past life.) There arc many specific causes that might r~vethe impression ofan original past cognition (plirNttUhhinJII), such as, for 10­

stance, association, repetition, similarity, 14Jqm,u1 orchancteristic mark. andso 00. But memory can be vilid (y"thirtbll) as well as invalid (tlJiltbirthil),

CHAPT.IC f.IGHT

b.ter in our Story. We have so far spoken only of me modem Western phjlo~

sophia! discussion on identity. This ~'U justified, since that is the groundon which the prindples and proceduf!..~of British Indian law were founded.But is there a different philosophical Indician in India that treats thesequestions differe~dy? Could. these ideas have molded, through languageand cultural pracoces, the actions and lc:iomonies of people involved in theBhllw:al s:annyasi affair? We should oUr Immediately that unlike many Eu­ropean 'phil?sophe~ 2nd jurists. Indi:U1 philosophical authority was :almostneverClted In the mal we are about to Ilcscribe. N~nheless, the questionof cu]tu:ally em~dded assump~ons. Irmsmined through language, rirual,and SOCIal P:acoces, does remam relcyant. They did become subjects ofcontroversy 1Il the legal battles moer the; sannyui.

It will be useful to make two general points about Indian philosophicaldiscussions on id~ntity and r~tion. First, although II great deal of In­dological scholarship since the nin~leenthcentury, bom in th~ West and inIndill, has focussed on the jtnum of the Upanishads as "the Indian notionof the self," this is by no means the whule story. The Upanishadic.itrnan isspirit or consciousness for which the world is object. It is universal, disin­terested; itS knowledge is objective, valid for'cveryone. To say "my amun"or "you.r atman" in me same WlIy that IIn~ SlIys "my self" or "your self"would, m fact, be meaningless. This is nUl a notion of selfhood that wouldyield, for instance, the narrative identity uf a chancter as described by Ri­coeur: But .alth~gh ~e ~cept ~f atman as subject is oeruinly t verypronunent Idea m Indian philosophical thought, it is not true to say that theco~ceptof person as I. ~ncrete, bodily emity that calls itself "I" does notW~LThe person, as dist1nCt from the atlllan, is a lutrtli (agent) and a hWU(enJOyer), He or sbe relates to objects in the world not as objects ofknowl­edge bu~ as objects.of affect or desire. Ob;ttts arc attractive or repulsive, to~ acquired or aVOided. ~e person li,·es in a mundan~ world of interests;his or her knowledge of this world both determines and is detennined byth~ life ofinte~ Such knowledge produces desire (iab$), which in tumlea~ to app~opriat~action (pr~), ",hid1, if successful, gives pleasure,and ifnot, pam. This mundane, empirical person is what bnnches ofknowl­edge ~ch as law, medicine, or social ethics hne to deal with.

TIus concept of the person, when it ap~rs as a philosophical idea is asJ: N. M6hantynot~~ "w~con~pt."1SThat is to say, it does not ~'us,lik~ the nonreductloDlst Vlew of ldentit)'. an irreducible and unanalysable~ty m2t.we call,tht person, On the contr.lt)', the person as a lepl or so­~Ial agent IS reduc~le to the psymoph}'S.ieaI body that:lets and enjoys. This15 t complex of botilly sens<:s, ego, and intdl«'t that, obviously, is not quitethe same as Partit's physial continuity of the bniJ, (not even in the case of~e Buddhist philosopbe~) but nevertheless implies a kind of reductionistVltw of the person. But the Indian philosopher would :llso S:ly Wt this per-

THE IDENTITY PUZZLF

I

133

n4

/

CHAPTER EIGUT THE IDENTITY PUZZLE IlS

Knowledge (hddJII)

Cognition (."ubbiTl/6)

FIG\1U 6. The N)'iyI. dusi6carioo afknowledge

The validity depends on whether the original cognitions were nuc. If so,the memory is in la:ord with the re31 nature ofthe objectS remembered Indso is wlid; if not, it is not in accord with the objectS remembered lind so isinvalid. (The. question here is nOl whether we have. remembered correctlybut wh~thc.r the memory is that of an origin:al true cognition.) Thus, I mayremember having filet someone in my childhood who spoke [0 me in Chi­nese, but in actual fact she was only spe:lking gibberish, which I tooL:: to beChinese. My mcltlfry is inwlid because it did nOt revive a true original cog­nition. The Nyiya philosophers speak ofdreams, for instance, as necess2r·ily invalid memory. But even wbm a memory is valid and awakens 11 truepast cognition (for instance, my memory ofbeing caned at school), it is DO(

in itselfpr.mu Of" true cognition, since the object ofcognition is not presentand the.cognition does not2risc: OUt ofthe object itsd£. (It might be a causeof reliefto me that the headm2m:r is not standing behind me with his ane,but I would still have to deny myself a true cognition.)

Recognition or pratyabhijiU means knowing a thing as that which wasknown before. It is not only knowing thal a thing is such-and-such (as inperception) but also that it is the same thing that ~e saw before. To repeatthe most &equendy quoted enmple here (which is exactly relevant to ourproblem), I meet. man called Devadatu in Benaras. "'1b.is is Devadatta,­~ say to myself. Seeing him, I remember meeting someone called Devadatt:lIn Ma.thura many years 21goi -this is Devadana: I h2ld .s:aid to myself then.

There is a true cognition now, there was a true cognition in the p:aSl, thereis an aMkening of the tr::Ice ofa past experience. But this is still not pratyab­hiji'ia or recognition. That happens when I now say to myself: "This is thesame Devadatta that I saw in Mathura."18

What sort of cognition is this? The Buddhist philosophers say it is a com­bination of perception and memory. It is nOl perception, because it relatesto a past obje<:t with which there cannot be a sense-contllet. I have no per­ception (pratyaqa) of the Devadatu I saw in Mathura. But it is not purememory, which can only refer to the past, whereas J'ecognition refers to apresent object: "This Devad.atta is the same as that Oevadam." It is also nota fusing of perception and memory, since the former arises OUt of sensationand the Inter out of imagin.ation and the two could not be fused into 21 sin­gle product. PratyabhijJli, say the Buddhists, is a dw.1 cognition, includingboth perception and memory and referring respectively to the two aspectSof .an object.as "tI).is" and "thn," th.at is, as present and past.

The Nyiy.a philosophers c1.aim, however, th.at pr.aty.abhijna is a singlepsychic act because it refers to one and the same object. There is a uniquecause (i:'arll!U) of the phenomenon of recognition that is constituted by thesenses and by the tr::Ices of past experience. Recognition gives us knowl­edge of an object as e:risting in the present and as qualified by its rdationto the put. A thing's relation to past time or • past experience is a chanc­ter that qualifies its present existence. To know this is to know that we haveperceived it befOre, that is, to recognize iL Thus, there is an dement of rep­resentation that takes the form of 21 de'finite recollection of some past 6­

perience of an object and that modifies its present perception. But it isnonetheless perception, albeit qualified, because: it is brought about by asense-object contaet. 19

It is not necessary for us to recount the abstruse, though often quite fas­cinating, arguments and countenrguments made by Nyiy.a, VaiSePka andMimiqtsa philosophers on this point. One important fe2ture of this deb.ateis the persistent concern with the possibility of doubt(~) about theknowledge produced by recognition. When I say "This Devadan:a is thesame as r::Iut Dev2datta,- what is the "that-ness- (tiltUl here? 1£ it is said, forinstance, that it is the combination ofpast: qualities known to me from pastexperience, me contempof2ry Nyip philosopher will reply: "Suppose: Ihave sem five black. pens in the past of which one is mine, and I see oneblack pen before me now. Is this that pen that belongs to me? I am certainabout 'the past qualities, but cannot eliminate doubt about that_ness."20When I ask, "Is this Devadam that Devadattl?" there can be many reasonsfor doubt about whether my perception of"this-ness" (iJ4"tJ) qw.Jified bythe knowledge of"that·ncss" (unal has yielded a true cognition. This De­vadatu, I see, is fat, whereas that Invadatta wu not; but then,.the "fatness­m.ay be a consequence of the pass:a~of time. Then 21gain, that Devsdatta

had long black hair, this Devadaua IS bald; mat tOO may be a changebrought about by rime. \V~ are back, once more, to th~ problem of dia­chronic identity; the Ny:iya philosophers are ever watchful for the presenceofdoubt. and the possibility of error. in the knowl~dge produced by recog­nition. The qualified percepuon of pratpbhiji'li cannot have the same eer­uinty as pratyalq;a.

Indeed, it is a general characteristic of the Nyiya theory that for nonin­ferential knowleage. especially of a kind that docs not fall into the class ofthe familiar, rruth it; never appr~hended from the beginning. There is al­W3}'S the scope, and indeed the n~ed, for further validation or corr~ction.llOne might say that whereas the primacy of perception in the yiya phi­losophy gives it a realist bent, its questioning of the other modes ofknowl­edge makes room within it for a large m~asure of scepticism.21

Anomer rele\<"3nt foNre of these debatC$ is that even when knowledge isprov~d to be invalid. it is not necessarily wh~lIy false. Thus. walking on thebeach, I se~ a piece of silver. Picking it up, I realize it is a seashell. My ~r­

lier perception is prm'ed to be erroneous. put. th~ Nyiya philosopher will53y, it was not entirely false, because the ~ashell does have some of the qual­ities of "sikerness.- Of course. although false knowledge. is not alwayswholly false, rrue knowledge must be true in all respeets.lJ

Two final points about memory and itS rol~ in recognition. The V.iSqibphilosophers argue that when one rem~mbers, the trace or impression(Si11(fSiir4) of past experience that is awakened is immediately destroyed, buta n~w impression is then croted. If I rem~mber someth.ing fr~quently, th~

sarpslcira is also frequendy renew~d. S~cond, th~ passage of time can de­stroy a satpwra if there is no memory that revives it. Som~ diseases, suchas those of the mind, can destroy salpslcira. Death destroys saTflsJclra; eventhe most learned man will nOt remember his learning in his nen life. Butneither time nor disease nor death will dotroy all S2TJlslcira. Sadly, it is im­possibl~ to tell which impressions disappear and which surviv~; "only theSupreme Lord knows that,- th~ philosoph~rs will say.2i

One more fonn oflmowledgt: is relevant to the next part ofour story ofthe Bhawal salUlyasi, and that is testimony or i4bJJz. Troe verbal testimonyis accepted by the Ny:jya philosophers as rrue cognition (prll11Ui"Jll). In fact,it is pointed out that a very great part of the knowledge. we ha~ (tb~

hilosophers obviously mean learned peopl~ like·th~mselves) is nOt fromur own perception of objects but from Qur perception of the words andntences we hor from our t~lchersor read in boob. Tro~ cognition pro­

!iced by labda consists of our undeT'Standiog of the statem~nts of trust­'orthy persons. Sabda Of" verbal tetimony is of twO lcinds: the v.idib oredic is divine testimony and therefore infallible; the lIIukiill or human tes­'mony is true only when it com~ from a trustworthy person.

Not all philosophers accept that v~rbal testimony is a distinct source of

true cognition. Th~Carvin philosophers say that if a testimony is aceeptedas rrue because it comes from a trustworthy person, it is only an inf~r~nce

(IInllmin4) from his char:lleter to th~ truth of hi~statemenl.Th~r~ is no in­{Ie~ndentsource of knowledge h~re. The Buddhists add th:n if from a tcs­timony we seek to prove that th~r~ arc actual facts corresponding to th~

statement, w~ reduce it to ~rception (pratylli[II). Here tOO there is no in­dependent source of knowledg~.Th~ Nyaya philosophers, however, insisttha.[ ~3bda is neither inference nor perception, because the validity of theknowledge produced by testimony depends not on the validity of the state­ment or of the facts corresponding to the statement but on the trUStwor·thiness of the unerer. Being realists, the Nyaya philosophers were, we canguess, only att~mptingto theorize the fal."t that w~ accept on trust by fa.r thegreater part of what we hold to be true. It is only a question of trusting theright authorities. But th~y w~re also emphasizing th~ speci6c mode ofknowledge invoh'~d in deciphering the meanings of words and sent~nttS

required for an und.erstandingofverbaltcstimony. Sabela cannot be reducedto inf~r~nce, they say, because we do nor h;wc to know th~ meanings ofwords to infer fire from th~ sight ofsmok~. But we cannOt gain any knowl­~dge from a lecture on physics if we do nor understand th~ meaning of th~words and sentences being spoken by the lecrurer. lJ

~r:lIl of these knorty philosophical issues will crop up in the legal d~­bates o~r the trial of the Bhawal sannyasi. Let us go there without furtherdelay.

136 CHAPTFR EIGIIT THE lI)ENTlTY PUZZLE Il7