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Economist and humanitarian, Amartya Sen writes about his multiple identities. He believes "the main hope of harmony lies not in any imagined uniformity, but in the plurality of our identities." Sen uses his own identity to illustrate his point, "I can be at the same time an Asian, an Indian citizen, a U.S. resident, a British academic, a Bengali with Bangladeshi ancestry, a graduate of two colleges in two different countries, an atheist with a Hindu background, a non-Brahmin, an economist, a researcher and teacher in philosophy, a Sanskritist, a married man, a feminist, a defender of gay rights, a non-believer in after-life and also before-life, and a non-believer also in frequent visits by extra-terrestrial aliens in austere spaceships, but a believer in the view that if such aliens do exist, they ought to make their spaceships a lot jollier and more colorful."1 After September 11th, in an attempt to understand the hatred and violence, many people found themselves trapped by labels, which Sen believes reduce complex ideas and identities, thereby often obscuring what is really important.

To talk about "the Islamic world" or "the Western world" is already to adopt an impoverished vision of humanity as unalterably divided. In fact, civilizations are hard to partition in this way, given the diversities within each society as well as the linkages among different countries and cultures. For example, describing India as a "Hindu civilization" misses the fact that India has more Muslims than any other country except Indonesia and possibly Pakistan. It is futile to try to understand Indian art, literature, music, food or politics without seeing the extensive interactions across barriers of religious communities. These include Hindus and Muslims, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Parsees, Christians (who have been in India since at least the fourth century, well before England's conversion to Christianity), Jews (present since the fall of Jerusalem), and even atheists and agnostics. Sanskrit has a larger atheistic literature than exists in any other classical language. Speaking of India as a Hindu civilization may be comforting to the Hindu fundamentalist, but it is an odd reading of India...

Dividing the world into discrete civilizations is not just crude. It propels us into the absurd belief that this partitioning is natural and necessary and must overwhelm all other ways of identifying people. That imperious view goes not only against the sentiment that "we human beings are all much the same," but also against the more plausible understanding that we are diversely different. For example, Bangladesh's split from Pakistan was not connected with religion, but with language and politics.

Each of us has many features in our self-conception. Our religion, important as it may be, cannot be an all-engulfing identity. Even a shared poverty can be a source of solidarity across the borders. The kind of division highlighted by, say, the so-called "antiglobalization" protesters, whose movement is, incidentally, one of the most globalized in the world, tries to unite the underdogs of the world economy and goes firmly against religious, national or "civilizational" lines of division.

The main hope of harmony lies not in any imagined uniformity, but in the plurality of our identities, which cut across each other and work against sharp divisions into impenetrable civilizational camps. Political leaders who think and act in terms of sectioning off humanity into various "worlds" stand to make the world more flammable - even when their intentions are very different. They also end up, in the case of civilizations defined by religion, lending authority to religious leaders seen as spokesmen for their "worlds." In the process, other voices are muffled and other concerns silenced. The robbing of our plural identities not only reduces us; it impoverishes the world. 2

CONNECTIONS

• How do unexamined ideas about human difference become categories and labels that define a person's worth to society?

• How do Sen's comments influence the way you think about groups, nations, and individuals? Do groups themselves have identities? If so, how do they develop their identity?

• How does a society decide which differences matter?

• Create an identity chart for Amartya Sen. What groups does he belong to? Create one for yourself. What groups do you belong to? Compare and contrast your identity chart with other members of the class so that you can see the multiple identities and the varieties of ways people express who they are. After sharing your identity charts, are there other categories you would now want to add to your chart? Which labels do others use to categorize you? How does group membership influence your individual identity? When do you choose to emphasize one facet of your identity over another? What influences those choices? What are the consequences of those decisions?

• Can you create an identity chart for a community? Culture? Civilization?

• According to Amartya Sen, the "main hope of harmony lies not in any imagined uniformity, but in the plurality of our identities, which cut across each other and work against sharp divisions into impenetrable civilizational camps." Sen suggests that we need to work to avoid sharp divisions and work towards accepting multiple interpretations and perspectives of identity. Why is that hard? Is it a kind of tolerance? What happens if we fail?

• Create a working definition for the words culture and civilization. How has Sen's article influenced your thinking? Are there values and roles shared by cultures all over the world?

• Psychologist Deborah Tannen writes, "We all know we are unique individuals, but we tend to see others as representatives of groups. It's a natural tendency, since we must see the world in patterns in order to make sense of it; we wouldn't be able to deal with the daily onslaught of people and objects if we couldn't predict a lot about them and feel that we know who and what they are. But this natural and useful ability to see patterns of similarity has unfortunate consequences. It is offensive to reduce identity to a category, and it's also misleading."

• Give examples of the ways that generalizing can be useful. Give examples of its "unfortunate consequences." How do Sen's comments support Tannen's observation?

• History teaches us to take seriously the dangers of using stereotypes to define others. At what point do physical and social differences become social and political divisions that affect what we believe is possible for ourselves and others?

• Many scholars believe that national borders mean less and less as the world becomes increasingly interconnected. Does that mean nationality is a less important marker of identity? Does it mean the opposite?

• Professor Henry Louis Gates argues that rigorous multiculturalism and encouraging diversity can help steer a society away from the dangers of "ethnic absolutism"? Do you agree? What does he mean by rigorous multiculturalism? What is tolerance? What is intolerance?

• This reading may be used with "Little Boxes" in chapter 1 of Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior. For further exploration of difference and how it affects membership in society, refer to Facing History and Ourselves: Race and Membership in American History: The Eugenics Movement.

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1 From http://www.bu.edu/pardee/news/lecture.htm [4]
2 Excerpted from "A World Not Neatly Divided" by Amartrya Sen, New York Times, November 23, 2001, op-ed

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