Amartya Sen to launch initiative that uses literature to bridge communities

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen launches Chair for the Reader initiative to promote communal harmony through literature in West Bengal.

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen will on Saturday launch an initiative that intends to promote communal harmony in West Bengal through literature by promoting reading habit so that the young gain knowledge from books rather than what is often called the ‘WhatsApp University’, which is mostly fake news circulating on social media.

The initiative — Chair for the Reader — plans to create reading spaces throughout the State, starting with one in Kolkata in the neighbourhood of Mominpur — so that people, particularly the young, find a space to spend time with books and also have addas that are literary in nature. It will be run by Know Your Neighbour (KYN), which regularly conducts heritage walks to bring out the syncretic nature of the city. Now, they will use literature to serve as a bridge between communities.

“We have been engaged in different ways to promote social cohesion and harmony since 2015 and our activities so far have mostly centred around organising neighbourhood walks, conducting field works and surveys, collecting oral narratives. The latest initiative, Chair for the Reader, seeks to create a curated reading space, not a library in the literal sense of the term, but a place where we would introduce certain books to the youth. We feel there is an absence regarding minorities in mainstream literature,” Sabir Ahamed, convenor of the KYN, told The Hindu.

“Through literary tools — reading, regular talks and exchange of ideas — we intend to reach out to a large section of people so that gaps, silences, neglected and misconstrued issues are addressed. We would also like to host storytelling sessions for school children and look forward to creating a digital repository for future researchers,” Mr. Ahamed added.

The launch by Prof. Sen will take place on Saturday evening at the Alipore Museum in the presence of Firhad Hakim, the mayor of Kolkata. The place rented at Mominpur is about 800 sq. ft, which KYN has been able to fill with 40 chairs, three tables, two bookshelves and a few bins — all sourced through crowdfunding.

“We made the announcement for starting the Chair for the Reader on June 2 — we asked for donations so that we could buy the chairs and tables. Our target was to raise ₹1 lakh, which we managed in a month’s time. Making an appeal through Facebook hardly helped, there was not much response; most of the funding came from outside social media,” Mr. Ahamed said.

He added, “Our programme will provide opportunities to the youth of Mominpur and the larger Khidirpur area, where there are no reading spaces or bookshops. But we welcome anyone keen to take part in literary discussions. The aim is quite ambitious, for we dream of opening such spaces across the West Bengal.”