Amartya Sen supports Naseeruddin Shah, claims India suffered because of patience for inequality, injustice

Kolkata: Nobel laureate Amartya Sen on Monday said Indians have suffered a lot by showing “super patience” and advised people to cultivate the “virtue” of impatience instead. Sen said that he will no longer tell anybody to be patient. “I think impatience is the most important virtue that we have to cultivate. I think India has suffered a lot from being super patient with inequality and injustice on one side and absurdity on the other,” he told reporters in Kolkata. [caption id=“attachment_3806281” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Amartya Sen. AFP[/caption] The 85-year-old economist’s comments came in response to a question on whether he would advice veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah - who recently stoked controversy with his remark on mob violence and appeared in a video for the Amnesty India against alleged government crackdown on NGOs - to be patient till the Lok Sabha elections were over. Sen, known to be a vocal critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, had on Sunday come out in support of Shah and said, “We must protest against such attempts to disturb the actor… What has been happening (in the country) is objectionable. It should stop.” He had also said many institutions in the country are under attack, and their freedom is being encroached upon. “Even journalists are facing harassment,” Sen had said. The Bharat Ratna awardee on Monday said he was happy with the media taking up the issue of “intolerance more fearlessly than in the past”. To another question, Sen said he took objection to the recent remark of Andhra University Vice Chancellor G Nageshwar Rao at the Indian Science Congress that the Kauravas in the ‘Mahabharata’ were born due to stem cell and test tube technology. “I am in favour of giving them some special name (to the ‘Kauravas’) rather than calling Kauravas test-tube babies. I object to what the Indian Science Congress is doing in the name of science,” he said. Sen also said he would advocate changing the name of the Nalanda University, where he had earlier held the post of Chancellor, as it was not “functioning in conformity with its heritage”. “There should be acknowledgement of it that it is no longer the Nalanda tradition that we have perceived. Nalanda today is not functioning in conformity with its heritage and the number of students have declined,” he said. In February 2015, Sen had resigned first as the Chancellor and later as a member of the governing board of the Nalanda University.