Sanjeev Sanyal

Sanjeev Sanyal is an Indian economist and popular historian.

Sanyal began working in financial economics in the 1990s.

Sanyal praises the 1991 liberalisation reforms as the harbinger of Indian Renaissance, and argues for the application of Complex Adaptive Systems framework to economic issues.

Among his most-espoused views is that the historiography of India has been distorted with "Colonial, Nehruvian, and Marxist" biases — thus, requiring a "rewriting" of history by "properly revisiting" primary sources.

In The Ocean of Churn, Sanyal argues that the primary sources used in painting a humane image of Ashoka can also be interpreted to reconstruct him as a genocidal tyrant.

According to Sanyal, Ashoka did not convert to Buddhism out of laments at the Kalinga War but due to political pressure exerted by the Jains.

A host of other sources are invoked to compare Ashoka with "modern day fundamentalists", whose Dhaṃma Mahāmātās were "religious police"; the famed edicts about religious tolerance are read as propaganda.

Sanyal blames the Nehruvian project for having established Ashoka as a "great king", and stresses on the urgent need of a post-socialist reading of history.

In Sanyal's version of this reading, the central character is Chanakya, a "professor of Political Economy at Taxila university" who had helped Chandragupta Maurya establish a pan-Indian empire and who then wrote Arthashastra about a centralised Mauryan economy.

Only when the Arthshastra is retrofitted to India's current political economy —by fixing the judicial system, investing in internal security, and simplifying taxation rules— among other things, Sanyal believes that we can return to the "golden age" of India that had birthed "yoga, algebra, the concept of zero, chess, plastic surgery, metallurgy, Hinduism, [and] Buddhism."

Meera Visvanathan, a historian of ancient India, finds Sanyal ignorant of methodologies in historical research.

As per Visvanathan, Sanyal's citations remained restricted to mainstream histories and seldom referred to the primary sources.

In deconstructing the narrative of Ashoka, Sanyal failed to apply source-criticism and imposed a host of anachronistic categories on the past.

Likewise, Sanyal remained oblivious of recent scholarship on Mauryan India and misrecognised a shastra of political economy, as it developed in Ancient India, as a manual of Mauryan statecraft.

Similarly, Sanyal's analysis of the Mahabharata was an exercise in speculation to fit preconceived notions of history.

Overall, Visvanathan found his works to be "riddled with holes" which commanded popularity among masses only because of Sanyal's "rhetorical flourish" and a simplicity that synced to majoritarian prejudices.

Sanyal's work having not been critiqued or contested by professional historians, who have never taken him seriously, is why, Visvanathan suggests, he has grown in stature and confidence.

Rohan D'Souza, a historian of South Asia at Kyoto University, approved of Visvanathan's critique as a "reality-check" to Sanyal's amateur efforts at rewriting history.

Manu Pillai, a popular historian, commends The Ocean of Churn for being a "delightful introduction to the world of the Indian Ocean" despite the possibility of professional scholars challenging his narrative and conclusions.

He welcomed Sanyal's command over a layered and complex past, his "accessible" yet "captivating narrative", and especially the reevaluation of Ashoka.

Shiv Visvanathan, a social anthropologist specializing in science and technology studies, praised the same work for being a feisty, combative, and comprehensive history of the Indian Ocean aimed at a general audience but cautioned that "a professional historian might crib".

Like Pillai, he commends the "devastating" reconstruction of Ashoka and recovering figures from the margins of history.

He then went to St John's College, University of Oxford, where he received a BA in philosophy, politics and economics in 1992, he was a Rhodes scholar, and received an MSc in Economics in 1994.

In 2004, Sanyal and environmental economist Pavan Sukhdev created the Green Indian States Trust to promote sustainable development.

Sanyal was awarded an Eisenhower Fellowship in 2007 for his work on urban issues.

Sanyal worked as chief economist for South and Southeast Asia at Deutsche Bank until 2008, leaving to research and write Land of the Seven Rivers, and returned in 2011.

In 2010, he was named Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

By 2015, when he resigned, he was a managing director and global strategist.

He has also served on the Future City Sub-Committee of the Singapore government tasked with building a long-term vision for the city-state.

He is a member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India, and has helped prepare six editions of the Economic Survey of India starting in 2017.

Sanyal has written several books on Indian history to mixed reviews.

Sanjeev Sanyal was born in Kolkata and studied at St. Xavier's School and St. James' School.

He received a Bachelor's degree in economics from Shri Ram College of Commerce, New Delhi.

In 2017, he was appointed as the Principal Economic Adviser to the Indian Ministry of Finance and in that job helped prepare six editions of the Economic Survey of India.

In February 2022, he was appointed member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister in the rank of the Secretary to Government of India.

In March 2023, Sanyal led the first edition of the Delhi University Literature Festival as its patron, alongside Swapan Dasgupta as the festival director.

Sanyal anchors Economic Sutra, a show telecasted on Sansad TV, the official channel of the Parliament of India.

The series covers various aspects of economic and financial policies, regulatory elements and institutional frameworks to be decoded for the average citizen's understanding.

Sanyal has been a vocal critic of Nehruvian socialism, which he deems to have stemmed from an "inward-looking cultural attitude".

Nehru and P. C. Mahalanobis are criticized for treating the economy as a "mechanical toy", leaving little scope for the flourish of private enterprises, and ultimately throttling creativity.