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India low on global homicide, violence scale: Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist, well known for his radical theories about the evolution of language and violence in society, opines for India that the country is on the right side of the global homicide and crime scale despite the wars it has fought and numerous civil conflicts.
On the side line of the Jaipur Literature Festival, the social scientist said “The last statistics that I had said India had a homicide rate of 5.5. It is in the second lowest range. India has had several wars with Pakistan but they didn’t compare to the Iran or Vietnam war. India has seen a lot of civil wars but on a per capita basis not a large percentage of the Indian population has been killed in these wars.”
All the wars put together since 1948 have killed around 50,000 people, Pinker said. Pinker said the most violent spot around the globe was probably the sub-Saharan Africa – Congo and Sudan’s Darfur region. The Canadian-American experimental psychologist, who teaches at Harvard University, is the author of eight books.
Two of his works, “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial Of Human Nature” and “The Better Angels of Nature: Why Violence has Declined” have been acclaimed worldwide for their pathbreaking ideas about cognitive science of the mind and theories about the scaling down of violence.
The scientist said many had “predicted after the second world war that it was the beginning” of many wars but that did not happen. “Korea and Vietnam are not happening any more,” Pinker said. He said it was too soon to tell whether institutions like democracy, peacekeeping forces were effective in controlling violence.
Source – IANS
India low on global homicide, violence scale: Steven Pinker
Originally published on: All India Today
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