In a recent exclusive interview to Freedom Research, professor and writer Sunetra Gupta discusses the meaning of freedom in both literature and science – as both require the breaking of molds for advancement. She says that the greatest loss of freedom in Covid years was manifest in how knowledge became treated as dogmatic, and science often got replaced by popular belief. Characteristically, much of the language used was actually the language of religion, she finds. She also discusses how academia has changed in the last three decades, being now driven much more by market interests and a desire for consensus – “which is the opposite of what the universities should be doing.” Regarding the hindsight of Covid, she says that those who supported lockdowns are not willing to engage in debate, though the harms of those policies remain very palpable. “The logical thing to do was to allow us to reach an equilibrium with the disease,” she says, “and during that process, to try and protect those who might be at risk of severe disease and death. That would have been the humane solution.” However, this became the heresy, she says, and we ended up harming the entire population.
Sunetra Gupta is a professor of infectious diseases at Oxford University, and in Covid years she was one of the original signatories of the Great Barrington declaration that advised focused protection instead of blanket interventions in the society. As a novelist, she is the recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award, a top recognition in Indian literature. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Read more about the Great Barrington declaration: https://gbdeclaration.org
Learn more about Sunetra Gupta’s literary career: https://www.sunetragupta.com/
Read excerpts of work by Mathura M Lattik: https://www.lyrikline.org/en/authors/mathura
