India faces ‘state crisis collapse’: Amartya Sen

The biggest cri­sis India is fac­ing right now is the “col­lapse of the nation”, Nobel lau­re­ate Amartya Sen said Thurs­day at the inau­gu­ra­tion of the Amartya Sen research cen­ter in the Salt Lake region of Kolkata.
What fright­ens him most, Sen said, is the divi­sions he cur­rent­ly sees in the coun­try. It was also “extra­or­di­nary” that colo­nial laws were being used to put peo­ple behind bars, he added, with­out specif­i­cal­ly men­tion­ing the recent arrest of an activist Teesta Setal­vad by the Gujarat Police.
Mere tol­er­ance would not be enough to counter all of this, he said. “India has an inher­ent cul­ture of tol­er­ance, but the need of the hour is for Hin­dus and Mus­lims to work togeth­er,” said the cel­e­brat­ed econ­o­mist, adding that “major­i­ty is not the end of everything.”

Sen’s com­ments fol­low furi­ous debate and vio­lence in sev­er­al states fol­low­ing com­ments by two BJP lead­ers Prophet Muham­mad. It also comes a few days after a tai­lor was behead­ed in Udaipur, alleged­ly over a social media post sup­port­ing the con­tro­ver­sial com­ments. Refer­ring to the con­tro­ver­sy, Sen said India was going through “an extra­or­di­nary sit­u­a­tion in which deroga­to­ry remarks were made about the Prophet”. BJP expelled one of the politi­cians in con­nec­tion with the com­ments and sus­pend­ed the other.
India is not a coun­try that rep­re­sents only Hin­du cul­ture, Sen said, adding that Mus­lim cul­ture is also part of the coun­try’s vibrant his­to­ry. “I don’t think Hin­dus as a group would be able to appre­ci­ate the Taj Mahal. dara shikoh, Shah Jahan’s eldest son, trans­lat­ed 50 Upan­ishads from the orig­i­nal San­skrit into Per­sian, enabling the world to learn about Hin­du scrip­tures, cul­ture and tra­di­tions. The ragas and music of Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan are also evi­dence that peo­ple of dif­fer­ent reli­gions work togeth­er to cre­ate mag­ic. Such coop­er­a­tion is nec­es­sary in India today, where to speak of tol­er­ance will not address the dan­gers of frag­men­ta­tion,” said Sen.

India has an inher­ent cul­ture of tol­er­ance because “Jews, Chris­tians and Par­sis have lived with us for ages,” he added. Sen also high­light­ed the impor­tant role of the judi­cia­ry in a democ­ra­cy. “The Indi­an judi­cia­ry often over­looks the dan­gers of frag­men­ta­tion, which is fright­en­ing. A secure future requires a bal­ance between the judi­cia­ry, the leg­is­la­ture and bureau­cra­cy, which is lack­ing in India. It is extra­or­di­nary that colo­nial laws are being used to put peo­ple behind bars,” the econ­o­mist said. Sen’s speech also allud­ed to the recent debate about rewrit­ing and eras­ing his­to­ry. The sto­ry was about truth and fact, he said. “We as cit­i­zens must take the risk and fight to pro­tect our nation’s com­mon his­to­ry and truths,” he added.