Muzzling dissent: Amartya on same page as Naseeruddin
Actor Naseeruddin Shah had questioned the condition of the country under the BJP regime
Kolkata: Nobel laureate Amartya Sen on Sunday endorsed the remark made by actor Naseeruddin Shah and questioned the Centre's attitude in stifling voices of dissent.
"If somebody is unable to bear with another person then it is clear that the former has lost his power of thinking. Whatever is going on in the country should stop. The elections are coming, let's keep our fingers crossed and see what happens," Sen said in response to a poser on Shah's recent remark at the Kolkata Airport on Sunday.
He further maintained 'what is going on in the country is disturbing' and there can be no denial of this fact. "There is interference even in the dietary habits of people. The type of meat that is being eaten in a household is also coming under glare," Sen said, adding that religious fanaticism has even led to deaths of people in the country.
It may be mentioned that Shah, in a video released by Amnesty India on Friday afternoon, said: "Is this where our Constitution is headed? Had we dreamt of a country where there is no space for dissent? Where only the rich and powerful are heard and where the poorest and most vulnerable are forever oppressed?"
Shah's comments had come hours after an Uttar Pradesh MLA from BJP was quoted as saying that he would bomb those who felt unsafe in India.
It may be mentioned that this is not the first time when the Nobel winning economist has been vocal and critical against the Narendra Modi government at the Centre. In July 2018, he had said that the lack of attention to social sectors has taken a "quantum jump in the wrong direction" since BJP came to power and that despite the visible prominence of backwardness in India, the political dispensation was diverting attention from the core issues.
In August at a programme held at Sisir Mancha in Kolkata, Sen had said all non-communal, non-BJP forces should come together for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and the Left should not hesitate in joining them as "democracy is in danger."
"We must express our opposition to autocracy, we must fight against their autocratic trends, we must criticise the issues where we need to oppose the non-communal right wing forces," the Nobel laureate had said.
