Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan joined the ongoing debate on intolerance in the country underlining why India’s tradition of debate and an open spirit of enquiry is critical for its economic progress. Rajan also said protection of right to question and challenge was essential for India to grow. Speaking at the 46th convocation of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, Rajan asked the students to safeguard the tradition of debate in an environment of respect and tolerance.
“IITans like you will lead India’s race for ideas. As you go out in the world, remember our tradition of debate in an environment of respect and tolerance. By upholding it, by fighting for it, you will be repaying your teachers in this great institution, and your parents who worked so hard to send you here. And you will be doing our country a great patriotic service,” Rajan said.
Taking a dig at the Central Government, Rajan said, “excessive political correctness stifles progress”.
“Actions that physically harm anyone, or show verbal contempt for a particular group so that they damage the group’s participation in the marketplace for ideas, should certainly not be allowed... if what you do offends me but does not harm me otherwise, there should be a very high bar for prohibiting your act. After all, any ban, and certainly any vigilante acts to enforce it, may offend you as much, or more, than the offense to me,” the governor told a gathering of IIT alumnus, faculty and students.
Rajan graduated in B.Tech (electrical engineering) from the same institute in 1985. Highlighting that India, including its educational institutes, must keep the platform for expressing ideas open, he said the need is to foster competition in the market place for ideas.
“This means encouraging challenge to all authority and tradition, even while acknowledging that the only way of dismissing any view is through empirical tests. What this rules out is anyone imposing a particular view or ideology because of their power, he said and stressed that instead all ideas should be scrutinised critically. “No matter whether they originate domestically or abroad, whether they have matured over thousands of years or a few minutes, whether they come from an untutored student or a world-famous professor.”
Quoting Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Richard Feynman, the former Chief Economic Advisor told the IITians that questioning is important to have alternative viewpoints and form new ideas. “Nothing should be excluded but everything should be subject to debate and constant testing. No one should be allowed to offer unquestioned pronouncements. Without this competition for ideas, we have stagnation,” he said.
He claimed that India has always protected debate and the right to have different views.