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2 INTERVIEW A language for the
world Amartya Sen, Nobel
economist
Interview by Sanjay Suri
LONDON - The "war on terror" is not
everybody's language, nor for that matter is
"globalization", says 1998 Nobel Prize economics
laureate Amartya Sen. Nor is anyone right to think
that religious radicalism is really an Islamic
problem, he says.
Such views made Sen, an
Indian, a natural choice to lead the
Commonwealth Commission on
Respect and Understanding in its search for civil
paths to peace. The group's report titled "Civil
Paths to Peace" was launched in London recently.
That report was presented to Commonwealth
Secretary General Don McKinnon ahead of the
Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in the
Ugandan capital Kampala from November 23 to 25.
The report follows a mandate from the
Commonwealth Heads of Government to look into the
causes of conflict, violence and extremism in the
53 members of the Commonwealth, the countries that
once formed the British Empire.
Inter
Press Service European regional editor Sanjay Suri
interviewed Amartya Sen after the launch of the
report.
Inter Press Service:
What does your report see as the prime causes of
conflict?
Amartya Sen: I
think that just as World War I was fed by playing
up nationality divisions, at the moment a lot of
the debates, are, and a lot of the fury and flames
are connected with the divisions of religious
distinctions. And I think to overcome that we have
to see the richness of human relations. And we're
really concerned with that.
It's a complex
subject. And yet unless we engage with the battle
for people's minds, there's no way, we believe, of
defeating violence and terrorism in the world. It
cannot be done by militarism alone. We don't take
the view that military actions never make any
difference. It can make a difference, but
certainly the civilian initiative, civilian
commitment and a variety of instruments connected
with media, education, the political process and
civil society engagement can make a difference.
IPS: It is usually
considered proper to speak broadly of a religious
problem, but a lot of people see it as primarily
an Islamist problem.
AS: I
don't think it is a problem of religion as such,
because, I mean I am not religious myself, but I
can see that for people who are religious,
religion can have quite an enriching role in their
life. But that's quite different from using
religious divisions for purpose of a sectarian
division, and for purpose of perpetrating violence
on people who do not share the religion but have
another religion.
But that is not confined
to Islamic - what you now call Islamic -
terrorism. That is a very small group of people of
the Muslim faith who happen to take a particular
view about how to advance it; I think the vast
majority of Muslims don't take that view.
And you see that kind of violence in
others too. When there were the Gujarat riots in
India it was the Hindu sectarians who played a
part. Similarly the Buddhist sectarians have
played a part in the Sri Lankan riots, and so on.
So I think it's the confusion between the
enriching role of religion, which is one identity
among a plethora of identities which human beings
have.
IPS: But what is
called the "global war on terror" is really
against Islamist violence.
AS: Well, the "global war on
terror" is not our language, of course. When we
refer to it, we call it the so-called "war on
terror". I think no matter what we think about
military initiatives, and many people took the
view within the commission that the Afghanistan
initiative was more correct in a military way than
the Iraq initiative was, but no matter how we size
up on that issue, we all agreed that the basic
philosophical understanding that underlines the
"war on terror" is far too limited. It does not
engage sufficiently in the battle for people's
minds.
And in that it so happened that by
seizing on one particular type of violence's
cause, it has taken a reading of the world in
which a clash of civilizations, particularly
between so-called Western civilization and
so-called Islamic civilization plays a big part.
But that's not the way the world is
divided. People between people who are Muslims, or
Christians or Jews or Hindus or Sikhs can
participate in the same business activities, can
take part in the same celebration of language and
literature, enjoy the same kind of music, there
are all kinds of ways in which they are united.
It's just a question of taking a small sub-set of
a very large group, and then identifying that
whole group with that little subset. Which does
not produce a very good way of understanding.
IPS: So is the idea of a
clash of civilizations misplaced?
AS: It's a wholly wrong
expression. For at least three different reasons.
One, that these divisions of civilization
are done on grounds of religion. But we don't have
only religious and civilizational identity. When I
talk with a Muslim friend, I happen to come from a
Hindu
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