Amartya Sen expresses fear of India disintegrating at the inauguration of his research centre
Nobel laureate Amartya Sen inaugurated the Amartya Sen Research Centre—envisaged as the flagship institute of his Pratichi Trust—on Thursday, June 30 in Kolkata. The trust was set up with the prize money of his Nobel Prize award in 1999.
Sen gave an hour-long lecture spanning several subjects, like tolerance, the cultivation of hate and the role of the judiciary.
Here are a few quotations from his lecture, gleaned from the reports by The Telegraph and The Indian Express:
“The lack of good schooling … is also important for what I believe is the biggest crisis that India is facing today. It is the possible collapse of the Indian nation. You may not think it has got anything to do with schooling but it has.”
“Among things that can be learnt at school is to reflect on what India is like as a nation … why it was ready to give room to Jews and Christians and early Muslims and Parsis.”
“Vilifying other groups of believers makes a country extremely vulnerable to cracking up. … The breakdown of the nation scares me.”
“So many of our achievements were created by Muslims. Taking the biggest figure of the religion, the Prophet, and trying to attack Him is an extraordinary piece of oddity with terrible effect on other people and our relation with the rest.”
“Even though the environment around us might try to change the history and remove Muslim influence, we all know that truth can’t be tampered with.”
“If you have to take on the fragmentism that is threatening India today, it is important to be not just tolerant but working together.”
“We have reason to be afraid if, despite the flashes of brilliance that we often see in the Indian judiciary, there may be cases of overlooking the danger of fragmentation. We are not in a position to lecture the judiciary.”
“Judiciary is important in every country. It is exceptionally important in India because a good future of India depends on a balance between legislature, executive and judiciary. … The legislature itself, which depends on elections, could be in great difficulty depending on the art of election. … In such a situation, the judiciary becomes particularly important.”
“If anyone asks me today, are you scared of anything? I would say yes. There are enough reasons to be afraid. Because I want the country to be united. It is not a matter of tolerance. I want the country to remain united as before. The people need to understand this more.”
