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While reading a review of Samuel Huntington's latest book "The
Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of World Order", I began to
reflect on our current state - as a nation, a society, even as
people. Huntington, in this oft-discussed book, scorns some of the
assumptions that have characterised American thinking, particularly
on foreign policy since around the beginning of this century. He
bases this rejection on the preposition that: "Western belief in
the universality of western culture suffers from three problems: it
is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous'. It is easy enough
to understand the first, because it is self-evident that other
peoples and civilisations do and will continue to have distinctly
different ideals and norms. It is the two other categories that
demand more attention.
So here, in a sentence each, is Huntington's own explanation:
Immoral because 'imperialism is the necessary logical consequence
of universalism" (read globalisation); and dangerous because that
assumption of superiority "could lead to a major
inter-civilisational accept that these, after all, are but
theories, not infallible, and also not irrefutable predictions
about what is to come. He writes: 'A global war involving the core
states of the world's major civilisations is highly improbable but
not impossible". These core states are described by Huntington as
representatives of the main cultural groups or civilisations as the
US, Germany, China, Japan, India, Russia, Indonesia, Egypt, Iran
and Brazil.
I find this arresting, not because I believe in it implicitly, but
because there are times when I am persuaded to conclude that
circumstances pushing human kind towards antagonism between
civilisations are strong enough to cause a conflict that is why
Huntington's arguments are disturbing. But this apprehension is
not why I wish to share my views with you in this column, it is
really much more about the impact of modernisation and
westernisation.
Now I do unshakeably believe that whereas India must modernise, it
must not westernise. lie problem arises in pursuing the path of the
former, that is, modernisation without falling Into the alluring
trap of the latter, that is, westernisation: principally because at
least in the initial phases westernisation and modernisation are
inter-linked. In these initial stages, when ancient societies like
ours move towards converting themselves into modern states they
have to, inevitably, absorb substantial amounts of the fall-out of
western cultural habits, and some other detritus, too, like junk
food and even jhnkier beverages. The need actually is to modernise
rapidly, (and with as little westernisation as possible) because
the faster a society-state modernises, the lower, I believe, will
then be its westernisation. This is principally a consequence of
acquiring greater self-confidence, through demonstrated success,
where after our indigenous culture and the strength of our identity
begin- to reassert themselves.
Modernisation at the societal level, says Huntington, "enhances the
economic, military and political power of the society as a whole
and encourages the people of that society to have confidence in
their culture and become culturally assertive". This does not hold
at the level of the individual, where modernisation generates
alienation and anomie because traditional bonds and social
relations get fragmented.
In India, we have no experience similar to what the European
evolution has been or what the 'western' civilisation has gone
through. We have no equivalent of the Renaissance or the
Reformation era of Europe; our historical and social experience has
been entirely different. You could, therefore, argue that what
Huntington says remains as entirely inapplicable to India. Not so,
for at least in one respect I am seized by anxiety. After all,
approximately 80 per cent of India lives in villages. What will
happen when in this age of informatics, intensified communications
penetrate our village societies? (Partly, already so). The
exposure of that culturally cloistered space of rural India (though
by no means immobile) to modernisation (inevitable) and also
westernisation will result in ideas, attitudes, even interests
being affected perhaps unalterably. Will great social uprooting and
turmoil follow? Europe, following the struggle between Renaissance
and Reformation, had to pay the price by more than a century of
wars, because even in their civilisation village-based morality had
been shattered. Perhaps, it is because of this that the prime
minister of Malaysia, Mohamad Mahathir, or the Japanese or the
'Swadeshi Jagran Manch' in India, are all talking, albeit with
different choice of words, about the vital need for an affirmation
of the indigenous.
Is this then a recipe for conflict? This assertion of identity? I
thing not. We will increasingly witness commitments to one's own
civilisational and cultural norms gaining greater and greater
adherence but this, by itself, is not sufficient ground for
conflict. Also, the very human inventiveness that granted us the
social structures that have survived all these centuries, remains
undiminished, even if it be transformed. The self-sufficient
autonomy of yesterday's villages will perhaps never be recaptured,
but that surely is no reason to fear that we will be surrounded by
chaos.
(Shri Jaswant Singh is the Dy Leader of the BJP in the Lok Sabha)
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