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Reacting to Amartya Sen's comment on Bharatiya Janata Party leader Narendra Modi that expressed his concerns towards the prospect of the Gujarat Chief Minister becoming the Prime Minister of the country, Janata Party President Subramanian Swamy in a shocking comment today said that the nobel laureate was not Indian because he had separated from his Indian wife and married two foreigners.
"Amartya Sen is not Indian. He had lost his Indian-ness after he left his Bengali ex-wife and married two foreign females. He has lived abroad and only visits the country for a couple of months, which cannot make you Indian", Swamy said here today.
Additionally, Swamy alleged that Sen was 'meddling' into the political affairs of the country to bail himself out of the corruption charges against him at Nalanda University. In 2007, the Government of India appointed Sen as the chairman of the Nalanda Mentor Group.
Yesterday, Sen told a television channel during an interview that Modi could have done more for Gujarat's education, health and for secularism, instead of focusing solely on physical infrastructure development in that state.
Referring to Modi, Sen said "I think I would like a more secular person to be prime minister. I would not like a prime minister who generates concern and fear among minorities. That is the primary reason. I am in favour of someone who looks at social administration and not just business administration seriously. That doesn't mean that I don't see what he has done and why people admire him."
Sen went a step further in saying that as an economist he didn't approve of the 'Modi model' of governance saying, "I don't think the record is very good. I don't have to be a member of the minority in order to feel insecure. I could be a member of the majority."
Sen said:"We Indians don't want a situation where the minority feel insecure and could legitimately think that there was an organised violence against them in 2002. I think that is a terrible record and I don't think Indian Prime Minister as an Indian citizen ... Of who has that kind of record. No, I do not.
