Identity and Violence: The illusion of Destiny The book: Identity and Violence, written by the Nobel Laureate, Amartya Sen, expresses the arguments against a reductionist approach to identity. It explains how this rigid and inflexible sense of identity, can be a cause for comfort and belonging to those part of a community, while it also acts as the cause for violence and oppression against those outside it. The author argues that the misconceptions we hold on various civilisations, and the idea of civilisational clashes, which is the basis for most of the violence prevalent, is misleading and adds to the distortion and manipulation of history. It makes for a more politically combustible society. For example, how the world is thought to be divided between the West and the Anti-West. Many believe science and technology, and democracy are Western ideas although India and the Middle East have huge contributions towards those concepts. Due to this misconception, many strongly oppose t...