While reading a review of Samuel Huntingtons 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 Huntingtons 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 war. I 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 worlds 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 Huntingtons 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. The 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 junkier 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, whereafter 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 think not. We will increasingly witness commitments to ones 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 yesterdays villages will perhaps never be recaptured, but that surely is no reason to fear that we will be surrounded by chaos.
