Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has said that the people of Bengal should stand up for secularism and not make the mistake of letting the State lose the force of religion-neutral politics.
“The major issue in Bengal today is to stand up for secularism, which needs strong defence, that sometimes it does not get, despite the long secular tradition of this region. Bengal needs a politics that is independent of religious sectarianism,” the celebrated economist said in an email to Sudipta Bhattacharyya, professor of economics and politics at Visva-Bharati.
Prof. Bhattacharyya is also the president of Visva-Bharati University Faculty Association, and had strongly supported the Nobel laureate last year when the university administration came up with the claim that a part of Prof. Sen’s ancestral property in Santiniketan stood on university land. The matter went to court and is still pending there.
