Indians Have Been 'Much Too Tolerant' Of Intolerance: Amartya Sen

Nobel Laureate and economist Amartya Sen has said India as a nation had become too tolerant of intolerance.

Delivering the Rajendra Mathur Memorial Lecture organized by the Editors Guild of India memorial lecture, Sen said the Indians have enough reasons to be proud of their traditional tolerance and plurality but have to work hard to preserve it

Sen, 82, went on to say that this intolerance did not start with the present government though it has added substantially to restrictions already there. M.F. Hussain, one of the leading thinkers of India, was hounded out of this country by relentless persecution led by a small organized group and this did not get the kind of support… event if the Indian government was not involved 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 Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. 

He also called for a reexamination of the need to continue with "remnants" of the the colonial rule such as Section 377 and Section 295 A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) which he said impose "unfreedom" on people.

"The Constitution does not have anything against having beef or storing it in the refrigerator," Sen said.

"The problem is not that Indians have turned intolerant.

It's on the contrary. We have been much too tolerant even of intolerance. When some people are attacked by organised detractors they need our support.

"It's not adequate for us to be offended by their attack.

We need to do something about it. This is not happeing adequately right now. And it did not happen adequately earlier as well," Sen said.

"Unfreedom is no longer imposed by us by our colonial masters. Have these unfreedoms really ended? Laws legislated by imperial rulers still govern may parts of our life. Section 377 is the most talked about," he said. Section 377 criminalises gay sex.

Sen also pointed out Section 295 A to be another remnant of Britsh law under which a person can be can be sentenced for hurting the religious sentiment of others "however personal and however bizarrely delicate that outraged sentiment might be."

(PTI also contributed to this report)