Amartya Sen: Towards unfreedom
“Faith,” it has been
said, “will move mountains.” It is an encouraging belief — when we need to move
mountains. But in our day-to-day life, relying on unquestioned faith rather
than on reasoning can be a big obstacle to leading an enlightened life, as Buddha
discussed 2,500 years ago. Also, arguing and communication can restrain battles
and bloodshed. To be sure, faith in good things can have many achievements
(such as generating charity and philanthropy), but it can, in general,
discourage the willingness to listen to others. And, faith in nasty things can
cause cruelty and carnage.
The Inquisitions that
blackened medieval Europe for more than five centuries drew on faith - in the
perceived duty to punish heterodoxy and kill the perpetrators. India has been,
I have tried to argue, fortunate in having a particularly argumentative
culture. The argumentativeness of Indians may have encouraged the tolerance of
heterodoxy, with debates and discussions restraining violent con-frontation. Historically, India
has certainly been a refuge for persecuted minorities from many different lands - providing shelter and new homes to hounded Jews from the first century,
harassed Christians from the fourth century, fleeing Parsis from the late
seventh century and oppressed Bahais from the 19th century.
Does India’s tolerance
of heterodoxy still hold? As we look around today’s India, the signs of
tolerance seem to have faded fast. The country that welcomed people fleeing
persecution abroad, and allowed the immigrating minorities to have their own
beliefs and practices (and food habits), now harbours gangs of wild men hunting
down beef-eaters, and killing people - very poor people - whose employment in
the leather industry arouses the suspicion of faithful believers in the holiness
of the cow. A leading news agency
that dares to include news that the ruling government does not like can have
its founders raided on extraordinarily flimsy charges (NDTV can tell you about
this, if you have not kept up with news about news).
Which side you back in
a cricket test match could possibly place you in custodial arrest on the
unbelievable ground of “sedition” as determined by the local bosses of the
ruling party in control of the police force, completely in violation of the
Supreme Court’s clearly stated rules on what kind of incitement to violence can
constitute sedition (“Give him another googly” does not quite qualify). With
the control of the police, sedition charges are coming plentifully - causing
terror with spurious legality. Further, you can be beaten up while in custody
(ask Kanhaiya Kumar, the student leader, also charged, rather implausibly, with
sedition).
In the suppression of
India’s tolerant tradition, the ruling party, the BJP, has clearly played a
gigantic role. What is astonishing is how much tolerance of intolerance the
political climate in India has been made to bear. It is as if stunned people
are waiting in a daze for something to happen. Further, many people with
evidently liberal instincts have been able to continue supporting the
government for one reason or another, such as expected benefits from Narendra Modi’s
economic reforms (what The Economist, the global magazine, calls “the illusion
of reform”), while the country is made to descend down the ladder of
intolerance and unfreedom… read more:
