by KARAN THAPAR
Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, who was conferred the Bharat Ratna in 1999 by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, has said: “The Modi government is one of the most appalling in the world.”
Professor Sen explained that he has come to this view because “it [the government] treats its own people in such a nasty way,” adding that “the Indian government’s record has been really rather terrible.”
He also said the Modi government’s treatment of Muslims, and the fact that it has no Muslim MP in either House of the parliament, is “unacceptably barbaric”.
“The word barbaric comes to my tongue because it’s not just unjust and wrong but it makes people’s lives totally precarious and makes India’s culture limited,” he said.
In a 34-minute interview to Karan Thapar for The Wire, Professor Sen discussed and considerably expanded upon a comment he made to the French newspaper Le Monde on December 19: “It (the Indian government) is communitarian in the narrowest sense of the term, attacking Muslims and propagating the idea that Hindus form a nation.”
While elaborating on his Le Monde interview, he said: “India has always been a multi-ethnic country,” adding pointedly that the Modi government’s communitarian and majoritarian policies are “a reduction of India”. He added that it was “a demolition of part of the country”. He called it “a national disaster”, adding that it was “a matter of horrendous potential of nastiness”.
The Wire for more