Home in the World: A Memoir

by Amartya Sen

To consider a particular application, early Indian legal theorists talked disparagingly of what they called matsyanyaya, ‘justice in the world of fish’, where a big fish can freely devour a small fish. We are warned that avoiding matsyanyaya must be an essential part of justice, and it is crucial to make sure that the awful ‘justice of fish’ is not allowed to invade the world of human beings. The central recognition here is that the realization of justice in the sense of nyaya is not just a matter of judging institutions and rules, but of judging the societies themselves. No matter how proper the established organizations might be – and the rules erected by the society (for example, about punishments) – if a big fish can still devour a small fish at will, it must be considered a patent violation of justice as nyaya. We needed a different – and a better – world, not just to follow old rules and hallowed conventions.