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Identity and
Violence: The Illusion of Destiny
Common to diversely different peoples in all these places is that they are having to live with violence sustained through what Amartya Sen calls "the illusion of a unique and choiceless identity". The invocation of one predominant identity is considered sufficient cause to intimidate and overpower the weaker others who are condemned to live, or die, for a singular, adversarial identity foisted on them. Unlike other philosophers, Sen not only interprets the world, he is compelling about the need to change it through reasoned choice; and in illuminating the choices, he makes the reader recognise that every individual has a plethora of identities, not just the one identity with which the person is born. Identity and Violence is about "the appalling effects of the miniaturisation of people", as the author puts it. This strips an individual of the right to choose any of many identities and reduces the human person to a single, often derogatory, identity. In the Indian context, this can be illustrated by the Hindutva campaign against Muslims. The Muslim is defined as being non-Hindu and, therefore, anti-Hindu, which makes him the ‘enemy’ in a country where the Hindus are in a majority. Sen calls this the "art of constructing hatred (by) invoking the magical power of some allegedly predominant identity that drowns other affiliations`85 The result can be homespun elemental violence or globally artful violence and terrorism". The Hindutva soldier condemns a fellow citizen as a "Muslim", which is the religion of his parents into which he was delivered at birth. This is an identity over which he had no choice; he inherited it. The Muslim, like any other Hindu or Indian, has a number of other identities, too: geographical, linguistic, social, economic, cultural, political, professional, personal, gender etc. She could have been born to an Army officer and a nurse in a Karnataka village with Telugu as her mother tongue and is now an urbane teacher of French in a convent school in Chennai, living in a middle-class apartment, member of the SPCA, a social worker, part-time dance tutor, weekly film critic, a frequent flyer on Air Deccan, leading light of the Rajnikanth Fans’ Association and president of the Saturday Ladies’ Club. She has the choice to be any and all of these, and when she can choose and live these multiple identities, no one has the right to force the one identity – of a Muslim – on her. Even a poor Muslim, or Dalit for that matter, is first poor and belongs to the unemployed or ill-paid; is a city worker or a labourer in the countryside; a father and has multiple identities arising from his work, location, activities and social associations. He belongs to a variety of groups – origin, residence, class, political, food habits, sports interests etc. The majoritarian unease with the Muslim in India is of a piece with the western hostility to Islam, particularly in the aftermath of 9/11. The violence by some radical groups of the faith has led to Islam being cast in a terrifying mould. Sen makes an admirable effort to rescue Islam, and the Muslim world, from what it has been condemned to. In this process of invalidating the basis for persecution of any religious or cultural group, he makes a formidable case for celebrating the multiple identities of individuals. The importance of plural or multiple identities in a world violently troubled by sectarian strife would appear to be self-evident. Yet, there is no dearth of attempts to impose a singular identity on large groups of people and thereby make them a target for hatred, persecution and violence. As Sen points out, "violence is promoted by the cultivation of a sense of inevitability about some allegedly unique – often belligerent – identity that we are supposed to have". The central theme of the book is ideas of identities and their relation to violence in the world. Sen discusses at length "that while religion or ethnicity may be an important identity for people, there are other affiliations and associations people also have reason to value". He underscores, repeatedly, that many of the atrocities and conflicts in the world are sustained through the illusion of a "unique" identity that is not the result of a reasoned choice but created to brutalise another. The strengths of the book - chiefly the articulations of one of the world’s best minds moved by the concern of eliminating violence and barbarity for recovering our membership of humanity – make it a must read. The weakness is that Sen’s tract, being in full professorial flow, is replete with repetitions. In fact, he has touched upon some of these ideas and arguments in his earlier works too. However, that is a problem for the initiated who are familiar with his ideas, theories and expressions, and should not put off those seeking to make sense of a world where religion and culture have been hijacked as instruments for wrecking freedom, peace, harmony, pluralism and diversity.
So, it came as no surprise when news of Amartya Sen being awarded the Nobel for economics in 1998 was tucked away in an inside page of the Financial Times (FT). If recall serves right, FT reported that a "little-known economist who worked on poverty in a district of Bengal" (some such put-down) had been chosen for the prize; and went on to suggest that as Master of Trinity College in Cambridge he lived in circumstances that were at variance with his concerns (about the poor). Again if memory serves right, the financial value of the College as real estate was also mentioned. The International Herald Tribune carried his photograph with one line on the front page followed by a report in the inside pages. What if he had been President of the American Economics Association and one of the three minds that conceived the Human Development Index. * * * At the lower end of the social and intellectual chain, Sen’s experience is best told in his own words, as he does in the opening lines of Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny. "Some years ago when I was returning to England from a short trip abroad (I was then Master of Trinity College in Cambridge), the immigration officer at Heathrow, who scrutinized my Indian passport rather thoroughly, posed a philosophical question of some intricacy. Looking at my home address on the immigration form (Master’s Lodge, Trinity College, Cambridge), he asked me whether the Master, whose hospitality I evidently enjoyed, was a close friend of mine. This gave me pause since it was not altogether clear to me whether I could claim to be a friend of myself". * * * And, some pages further, Sen sets out his own identities: "I can be, at the same time, an Asian, an Indian citizen, a Bengali with Bangladeshi ancestry, an American or British resident, an economist, a dabbler in philosophy, an author, a Sanskritist, a strong believer in secularism and democracy, a man, a feminist, a heterosexual, a defender of gay and lesbian rights, with a non-religious lifestyle, from a Hindu background, a non-Brahmin, and a nonbeliever in an afterlife (and also, in case the question is asked, a nonbeliever in a "before-life" as well). This is just a small sample of diverse categories to each of which I may simultaneously belong – there are of course a great many other membership categories too which, depending on circumstances, can move and engage me." — S.R. |
The
Eminent
economist, philosopher of social choices and Nobel laureate, he may be.
Yet he is not easily recognised, by either the informed elite or the
immigration babus.