7 Indians among the ‘top100 intellectuals’

DUE RESPECT: Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen is among the seven Indians nominated in the list.

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Keywords: List, Top Intellectuals

New Delhi: They are some of the world’s most introspective philosophers and rabble-rousing clerics. A few write searing works of fiction and uncover the mysteries of the human mind.

The latest issue of the influential Foreign Policy magazine has identified the world's Top 100 "public intellectuals", in its second such exercise, awarding America - and the United States - with more cerebral heft than any other continent or country.

India comes out shining too. Besides familiar names such as Al Gore, Noam Chomsky, Francis Fukuyama, Umberto Eco, Lee Kuan Yew, the list has some half-dozen Indians including top historian Ramachandra Guha, political psychologist Ashis Nandy, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, journalist and author Fareed Zakaria, novelist Salman Rushdie, neuroscientist V S Ramachandran and environmentalist Sunita Narain.

Although the men and women on this list are some of the world’s most sophisticated thinkers, the criteria to make the list could not be more simple.

Candidates must be living and still active in public life. They must have shown distinction in their particular field as well as an ability to influence wider debate, often far beyond the borders of their own country.

(with agency inputs)