With customary flair, Prof. Sen is telling us that arguing (and producing new ideas) is a lustrous aspect of Indian tradition and culture
Prof. Amartya Sen, who can be nothing if not a champion of free expression if he can author a book such as The Argumentative Indian, runs the risk that sociologist Ashis Nandy recently did in an age in which media reporting — especially in television — is content to pick out words regardless of context, or smoothen out an
argument to such a degree that it is shorn of all its fine points and nuances in order to achieve a linearity of opposing poles for the sake of dramatic effect.
The impression apt to be created by reports of the Nobel laureate’s observations at the Kolkata Literary Meet on Sunday is that he considers issues of health, education and livelihood more important than the “distractions” brought about by a subject such as the freedom of expression. But a reading of the fuller text of his remarks in answer to media questioning offers a deeper perspective on free expression which has lately been in the limelight due to Dr Nandy’s travails, and the treatment meted out to Salman Rushdie and filmmaker Kamal Haasan by bigots who received the unconcealed backing of state governments.
To clear the air rightaway, the economic-philosopher notes: “Anything that makes the Indian constructive argumentative tradition more militant — (so) that people have the right (to be offended) and therefore you cannot say some things — becomes a limitation because it restricts the conversation.” With customary flair, Prof. Sen is telling us, in effect, that arguing (and producing new ideas) is a lustrous aspect of Indian tradition and culture, and a deviation from this signifies a departure from civilised intercourse. The basic point made, Dr Sen makes the argument — in the news context of today — that Muslim groups which protested against
Mr Rushdie’s proposed visit to Kolkata were distracting attention from “the real disadvantages” that their community faced. A lot of people who were “enormously disadvantaged” have “enormous reasons” to complain about other matters (not Rushdie’s visit), he observed.
To his credit, Prof. Sen — a champion of the underprivileged and an “unreconstructed secularist” — also criticised the leadership of the Left parties, asking them to raise their game and to go beyond protesting diesel and petrol price hikes and enter the areas of public health, sanitation and education (agendas the Right typically hesitates to embrace except to give the market forces an entry, where feasible).
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