'Amartya Sen should remain silent,' says West Bengal BJP chief Dilip Ghosh

A day after Nobel laureate Amartya Sen's strong criticism about the current political situation in the country, West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh on Sunday said Sen should remain silent. "Amartya Sen should remain silent. He should not react like this. He has nowadays minimum prestige and he should be conscious about that," said the BJP president.

This is not the first time where Ghosh has reacted to Sen. In 2017, Ghosh had called Sen 'spineless' when the latter had criticised about demonetisation.

Speaking on Ghosh's remark, Trinamool Congress party leader Partha Chatterjee said, "Dilip Ghosh doesn't know how to speak. He should have a minimum education to talk about Nobel laureate Amartya Sen. We also agree with Sen. Our chief minister Mamata Banerjee also believe religion forces must be gathered in nationwide perspective."

CPI(M) leader Sujan Chakraborty said, "We totally agree with Amartya Sen's view. As a left party, we always try to learn. Sometimes we fail but we take lessons from our past. We don't want to say anything about BJP's views on Amartya Sen. They don't have any sense about this man. They only believe in communal politics."

In a scathing attack on the Modi government, nobel laureate Amartya Sen on Saturday had said all non-communal, non-BJP forces should join hands in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections as "democracy is in danger".

"We must express our opposition to autocracy, we must fight against their autocratic trends, we must criticise the issues where we need to oppose the non-communal right-wing forces, but we must not take back our hands when it comes to fighting communalism which is the biggest threat," he had said in Kolkata.

Sharply criticising the BJP government at the Centre, Sen said a party having got "31 per cent votes and ill motives in politics" came to power in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

"What happened in 2014 polls? A party having got 55 per cent seats but actually having secured 31 per cent of the total votes, came to power... A party with ill motives," Sen said during a question-answer session 'Bharat Kon Pathe' (Which way is India heading?) at Sisir Manch auditorium in Kolkata. 

Sen said during his visit to Kolkata this time, he has heard whispers in certain quarters that to stop the autocratic trends in the state, BJP can be the viable medium and not the weak CPIM.

"This is a strange logic. To stop autocracy, we will be sowing the seed of communalism. This seed can be weeded after a lot of time, effort and battle in future," he said. He said every political question should not be interpreted through leftist and rightist prisms.