Impatience is the most important virtue that we have to cultivate: Amartya Sen

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen on Monday said Indians have suffered a lot by showing "super patience" and advised people to cultivate the "virtue" of impatience instead.

Sen said that he will no longer tell anybody to be patient.

"I think impatience is the most important virtue that we have to cultivate. I think India has suffered a lot from being super patient with inequality and injustice on one side and absurdity on the other," he told reporters here.

The 85-year-old economist's comments came in response to a question on whether he would advice veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah -- who recently stoked controversy with his remark on mob violence and appeared in a video for the Amnesty India against alleged government crackdown on NGOs -- to be patient till the Lok Sabha elections were over.

Sen, known to be a vocal critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, had on Sunday come out in support of Shah and said, "We must protest against such attempts to disturb the actor... What has been happening (in the country) is objectionable. It should stop."