Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny by Amartya Sen Search Amazon for other books by or about Amartya Sen. Rating: Reviewed by: John Walsh

Amartya Sen is the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in economics and has for decades been a sane, patient and sapient voice in applying academic ideas to the real world - which is a trait from which more economists could benefit and which can also be seen in the recent winner Paul Krugman. His various books have argued for the need for peace and democracy as a means of ending not just misery but poverty and starvation, while his understanding of the multivalent complexity of human society has let him argue for tolerance and understanding in place of the violence and confrontation that now characterise "political discourse" in so many places. It is these latter themes that he again tackles in this slim book, which consists of versions of a series of lectures originally given at Boston University in 2002 and subsequently expanded to the nine chapters included here, together with preface and foreword. Sen begins his analysis with the issue of the dangers of trying to categorise people according to a single variable - specifically the ethnic-religious category used by, among others, Samuel Huntington in his ill-informed and poorly thought-out book The Clash of Civilizations. According to Huntington, as an example used several times by Sen, India must be categorized as a Hindu state despite the presence of 150 million Muslim people (more Muslims in one country than anywhere else in the world save Indonesia and, just about, Pakistan), plus millions more Buddhists, Christians, Sikhs, atheists and others. Indeed, anyone who has visited India or knows anything about its history will understand the futility of trying to categorise it in any one way at all. Sen argues further that individuals are, in reality, combinations of numerous different interests, ideas, cultural and historical traits, religious beliefs and intellectual concerns. Reducing people to one variable is the trick that has been used by nationalists throughout the ages to foment hatred of "the other" and the grotesque evils of "racial purity" and then ethnic cleansing. Sen's memory of the violence of the Partition and creation of Pakistan informs his analysis with urgency and compassion. From this basic idea flows his many other ideas, supported judiciously by historical, literary and cultural references, leading to the importance of tolerance and the need for mutual learning and respect. Along the way, he corrects some of the myths of western triumphalism which are so commonly but erroneously held, not just be people in the west.

Of course, there are many ideological opponents of tolerance and multiculturalism and there must, too, be suitable limits on these characteristics: Sen is clear that cultural heritage should not lead to cultural conservatism and the ability to choose is a fundamental human right (most commonly denied to women by men). Voluble right wing critics, who are such a feature of the internet, argue the opposite to Sen, that there is a threat from a specific set of people who are fanatical and religious and bent on terrorism and murder. Certainly there is evil in the world, sufficient unto the day will be the evil thereof after all, yet to characterise all dissidence as moral deficiency is also an act of evil.

The nature of a series of lectures is somewhat problematic when reproduced in book form. A lecturer must make sure that members of the audience who may have missed one or more lectures (doubtless for the very best reasons) must not be completely locked out from being able to understand and engage with the next lecture. This entails a degree of repetition and of referring backwards or forwards to other lectures or chapters in which one or other argument is established. Reading the book through in the form of a single narrative, therefore, provokes some small problems.