India as a nation had become too tolerant of intolerance, said Amartya Sen, a Nobel Laureate and economist.
Editors Guild of India memorial lecture organized Rajendra Mathur Memorial Lecture. Speaking at the occasion, Sen said the Indians have enough reasons to be proud of their traditional tolerance and plurality but have to work hard to preserve it.
“The problem is not that Indians have turned intolerant. Infact to the contrary we have been much too tolerant of intolerance,” he said.
Reminding about the attacks on writers and scholars recently, Sen opined that, when people in minority (of scholarship of community) are attacked by organized detractors, they need India’s support.
Lecturing about “The Centrality of the Right to Dissent”, Sen said, “This I am afraid not happening adequately right now and this did not happen adequately earlier as well. But then it did not start with the present government, though it has added substantially to restrictions already there.”
Sen further said that, due to the relentless persecution led by a small organized group, the acclaimed painter, M F Hussain, was hounded out of India. Sen opined that, he could not get the kind of support that could have stopped his migration.
“In this case, however the Indian government at least was not involved though it could have easily protected Hussain. Indian government’s complicity, however was much more direct when India became the first country in the world to ban Salman Rushdies’ Satanic Verses,” he said.
Referring to the Dadri incident in which a man was lynched by a group, for allegedly storing beef in his home last year, clearing the air about it, Sen said that, the Constitution does not have anything against anyone eating beef, storing it in the refrigerator, even if there are few people, who are offended by the food habits of others.
“Murders have occurred on account of hurt sentiments arising from private eating,” he said.
Sen said most Indians, including Hindus like him, accept the food habits of those belonging to other groups and are ‘familiar and tolerant’ of other people’s religious beliefs.
When asked about the solution for the ongoing intolerance issue in the country, Sen suggested three solutions. Firstly, to blame the Indian Constitution for what it does not say and next, not to allow a few of the colonial rules, under IPC go unchallenged and lastly, Sen said that, one should not be tolerant about intolerance which undermines our democracy.
By Phani Ch
