Britain could learn from Gandhi

We have many identities. Religion, caste, class, even shoe size. Plurality is the key

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s latest book, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (Penguin Books), was released this week. The eminent economist-thinker spoke to TOI on some of the core issues in the book. Ronojoy Sen Sunday Times of India April 2, 2006

The idea of plural identities is critical to this book. But aren't some identities more important? Isn’t there a hierarchy?

There is no fixed hierarchy. We belong to many different groups defined by religion, profession, politics, language, literature, culture and so on. And potentially any of these memberships could be the basis of an important identity. But some of them are judged to be actually not so important. Unless there is a very special reason, for those who wear size 8 shoes that may not be a particular marker of identity. But on the other hand if size 8 shoes become very rare then you might actually form an association of people who exchange information where size 8 shoes come in. There is no claim that every identity is as important as the other identity. A vegetarian identity is very important if you’re going to dinner but it’s not so important if you're going to an economics lecture. It depends on the context. The first thing is to recognise that we have many identities. That's a very ordinary thought. We have to determine what priority to give to these identities.

Doesn't one's identity defined by religion or caste become far more important in certain contexts?

You’re right. The relative importance varies with the context. But reasoning can capture that. You have to reason about what relative priority to give to your different identities. If Hindu-Muslim riots are going on, you might feel very angry with members of the other community. You may have a reason to identify yourself with that particular community but you have a bigger reason, perhaps, for identifying yourself with a nationality, humanity and so on. You have to ask yourself the question: which is more important for me to act on the basis of.

You would disagree that there are certain primary identities such as religion.

No identity becomes important without being intervened by thought. There are people who are moved by their religious identity during communal riots. Others find it revolting to view it that way. The difference is reasoning; the difference is not a fact of nature.

Religion is not always about rationality.

I agree, but that does not mean religious identity is not a matter for you to reason about. If you take the view taken in the Afghan constitution that if you convert from Islam to Christianity then you should be put to death, that is an attempt by society to impose a restraint on your reasoning. That is not a restraint that applies to reasoning as such; it's a social constraint on using the power of reasoning.

Isn't there a class bias in your notion of unlimited identities. Don’t the poor have fewer choices?

There is no claim that everyone's choice set or menu or options are the same. On the other hand to say that for people who are economically disadvantaged the choice of identities is less important would be a great mistake. It could be much more important. If you’re a Dalit, it may be much more important to assert your Dalit identity. If you are at all successful, you may have the option of looking at your identity with other successful people and forgetting your Dalit identity. But you might then wish to emphasise your Dalit ancestry because you think it’s the right thing to do. These are choices for you to make and these choices should be scrutinised and be informed no matter which part of society you belong to. In general, I don't accept that choices become less relevant for poorer people. In some contexts they are much more critical. There is no systematic rule about that.

Often people find themselves in situations where they are forced to make a cer tain choice.

What you are pointing out is that it is possible that even though you have identities of choice and freedom to reason, there might be attempts to prevent you from using that reasoning and to make you a part of herd behaviour. But that doesn't mean that you potentially don't have the freedom to reason. It's one thing to say I do not have any freedom and the other is to say I do have freedom but I'm not exercising it, or to say I cannot exercise it because of some constraints that are being imposed. There is also the point that Sartre makes. Often the constraints that we suffer from arise from the fatalistic belief that we don’t have any freedom even when we actually do, provided we are determined enough to resist being subdued.

Your book talks about multiculturalism. How would you characterise the Indian model of multiculturalism vis-à-vis Britain?

The Indian model of multiculturalism is more thought out than the British one mainly because we have been a multicultural society for a very long time. Beginning at least with Ashoka all the way down past Akbar, people have theorised about it in a way the British have not. Now that suddenly Britain has many immigrant communities and different religious communities, the issue of racial identity has become much more important. But I don’t think the policymakers have really thought through it very much. That’s why I argue that the British can learn a lot from Gandhiji’s clear-headed reasoning about identity emphasising that a person's religious identity is very important for his religion, but should not invade other domains like politics. To assume that a person's membership of the nation is mediated by his religious identity would be a mistake. What Gandhiji said about identities in India would apply to Britain as well.

But the Indian Constitution has a range of mechanisms to regulate religion.

The Indian Constitution tries to guarantee that certain types of exercise of identity should be protected by the state and not obliterated. But it never takes the position that your understanding of Indianness is parasitic on being a Hindu or Muslim. Plural identity is a central issue here—your religious identity is very central, as Gandhiji said, for your religion and yet it isn’t very central necessarily for your politics. If you think about the divisions at that time, Gandhiji was very religious but very nonsectarian and secular in politics, while Jinnah focused on religious divisions in politics in terms of the different communities of Muslims and Hindus but wasn’t very religious himself. The strength of a religious identity does not imply it has to interfere in politics.

You cite Akbar and Ashoka as crucial figures in Indian multiculturalism. But isn't their influence limited?

Their ideas had a very profound influence on thinking across the country. Take Akbar and the intellectual world in which he was interacting. The kind of thinking that generated Kabir, Dadu, Mirabai and the Bauls also generated Akbar. Akbar was a very powerful person and emperor of India and made a major contribution. I should add that when he formulated the need to protect the rights of all citizens to have religious freedom, he was being a pioneer not only in India but also in the world. Also we are not the first today to recognise the greatness of Akbar. One has to be blind to culture and intellectual currents of thought to think he had no influence at all.