A WIDE CANVAS
IDEAS MOVE SOCIETIES
The whole world is today engaged in the quest for economic development. This is conceived mainly in material terms, and is measured by certain indices or numbers like the GDP. Political democracy is the other great idea to which people pay homage. In practice, we observe that neither of these ideas is working all that well.
When we see a beautiful car, we admire it. But how many people realise that it was some engineer, some designer who first thought of it or imagined it in his mind? The beautiful car was really born as someone's idea!
If we are serious students of science or humanities, or social sciences, we may understand how even a beautiful car pollutes the world, no less than an ugly car or ungainly truck! The beauty masks the poison that is pollution.
The idea of economic development is also a mask that veils more serious problems. We hardly understand how it began and how it works.
Up to the end of 15th Century- what are known as the Middle Ages- Europe was very backward; Life was controlled by the Church in all aspects; much of the land was owned by the Church.
The first stirrings appeared in Italy when scholars got acquainted with the history and thoughts of ancient Greece and Rome. They rediscovered ideas and philosophies which had been suppressed by the Catholic Church.So started the quest for knowledge, independent of the church doctrines. This is called 'Renaissance'- rebirth in French: rediscovery of ancient Greek and Roman texts and insights, which did not support the views of the Church.
People had started travelling in search of new continents. Scientists had started exploring the skies. The church had been advocating the doctrine that the earth was the centre of the universe and that the sun, moon and the planets went round it.They said this was how God had created the universe! This is known as 'Geocentrism'.
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This was based on the views of the old Greek astronomer Ptolemy and philosopher Aristotle.(However Pythagoras did not agree with this, but he was ignored by the church).
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This ruled not only theology, but also 'natural philosophy', which was the name for science then. But people like Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo proposed that it was the earth which was moving round the sun!
Copernicus (1473-1543) who first contradicted the geocentric view.
1580 portrait. Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons
Galileo had observed the phases of Venus and the moons orbiting Jupiter through the telescope in 1609. But his findings were not acceptable to the church and its theologians and they tried Galileo for 'heresy' in 1611 and 1616 and the Pope ordered him to be put under house arrest for the rest of his life!
Public Domain, Wikipedia Commons
This view that sun is fixed and it is the earth which goes round it is known as 'Heliocentrism' . Though science has now accepted it, it is found that nearly 20% of the people of the West (mostly Christians) still believe in geocentrism!
By this time, Roman Catholic authority was also challenged by Martin Luther (1483-1546) who held that salvation was not obtainable by church indulgences (which were sold)but only by grace of God through faith in Christ. He enunciated 95 principles against the Catholic doctrine. When he refused to retract them, he was excommunicated by the Pope, and declared outlaw by the emperor. He translated the Bible from the Latin into the vernaculars which became popular. His movement led to a great division in Christianity , known as the Reformation, leading to the Protestant denomination.This led to some liberalisation in the society, loosening the grip of the catholic clergy. Later sociologists have attributed the rise of capitalism to the 'protestant ethic'.
Martin Luther as a Monk- prior to the reformation.
Lucas Cranach. Public domain. Wikimedia Commons.
The voyages of discovery undertaken by sailors and explorers resulted in the discovery of new continents and new routes to India and Asia, as the old land route through Constantinople was blocked by the Muslims. This led eventually to the colonisation of South and North America, Africa, and of Asia by the Portuguese, Dutch, French and the English. This generated great wealth for them by trade and loot, and laid the foundations of capitalism through doctrines such as Mercantilism.
By then, discoveries had been made in other branches of science. Steam power revolutionised transport, and invention of machinery and methods like division of labour revolutionised manufacture: factory system took over and the old arts and crafts gradually disappeared. The colonies facilitated both raw materials and markets and the whole of Europe grew, at the expense of Asia. India and China, which had been world economic leaders for 18 centuries up to mid-18th century declined.
Darwin's theories about evolution were adapted by these powers in a strange manner. They had acquired great political power over the other lands and people. There must be a reason! Darwin's theory proposed that evolution is based on competition (struggle for survival) and natural selection! So, if these people of Europe had conquered the rest of the world, it showed that they were superior! Thus was "Social Darwinism" born, leading to a belief in the superiority of the Western white race! At the height of Imperialism in the 19th century, English politicians believed in the civilising mission of the white races- what they called 'the White man's burden'.Poets like Rudyard Kipling sang about it.
With the spread of the colonial rule, they looked at the old countries with European eyes! The White man was superior, his methods were superior, his history was the ideal, his view of life was the correct one. They did not try to understand the language or literature of these people, nor understand their religion (with rare exceptions.) Everything that was not European was brushed aside as of no consequence- an attitude fully enshrined in the minute of Macaulay which laid the foundation of Indian education in 1836. This is Eurocentrism.
In the 20th century, the US has eclipsed all other western societies in power and so, by the logic of social Darwinism, the American way is considered supreme - an ethnocentric view of things!
The education system that we follow, and all socio-economic theories that are taught are based on all these ideas, though they are nowhere explicitly stated.The idea of economic development, as the west advocates it, is a continuation of the idea of Progress which characterised the imperial age.
Though the former colonies have gained political freedom, they are unable to get rid of the load of colonial attitudes and ideas. Whether it is our history, literature or religion and philosophy,economics or society, our food habits and lifestyle- everything is judged by American standards, American theories and attitudes!
Palestinian American Scholar Edward Said used the term "Orientalism" to describe the situation. The West promoted their own view of what was "oriental" ( he meant the Middle-East, India and North Africa) and condemned it. Their intellectual followers ( ie mental slaves) in the former colonies , who formed the ruling elite after Independence ( Nehru is the prime example) still labour under it! As Said said:
Edward W.Said . Picture downloaded from the Internet. Copyright details are not known. It is used here for non-profit, purely information purposes, as other sources are not available.I doubt if it is controversial, for example, to say that an Englishman in India, or Egypt, in the later nineteenth century, took an interest in those countries, which was never far from their status, in his mind, as British colonies. To say this may seem quite different from saying that all academic knowledge about India and Egypt is somehow tinged and impressed with , violated by, the gross political fact- and yet, that is what I am saying in this study of Orientalism.
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The colonial powers never looked at the colonies as people with their own distinct history, culture, philosophy, etc. which were valid on their own. Everything was compared to the the coloniser's
own standards and found wanting. Everything different was pronounced deficient! The colonies were there to be exploited, the 'natives' were to be ruled! The coloniser could only look at them as subjects, never people on their own! As Said says further:
From: Edward W.Said : Orientalism. Introduction, p.11if it it true that no production of knowledge in the human sciences can never ignore or disclaim its author's involvement as a human subject in his own circumstances, then it must also be true that for a European or American studying the Orient there can be no disclaiming the main circumstances of his actuality: that he comes up against the orient as a European or American first, as an individual second. And to be an European or American in such a situation is by no means an inert fact.
Penguin Books India,2001.
No study of a society by one belonging to another can be "objective" .Many westerners may still regard India as being a land of elephants and snake charmers.
The cover of one of the editions of the book, showing a snake-charmer!. Copyright details not known. It is used here purely for non-profit, educational purposes, as it illustrates the theme of this essay. There is no other source.
Said followed up Orientalism with another brilliant study of the origins of Imperialism and its manifestations in Western culture: Culture & Imperialism. He shows there how Imperialism is part of Western culture and how America has now become its chief exponent.
Rarely before in human history has there been so massive an intervention of force and ideas from one culture to another as there is today from America to the rest of the world.......Yet it is also true that in the main we have rarely been so fragmented, so sharply reduced, and so completely diminished in our sense of what our true (as opposed to asserted) cultural identity is. The fantastic explosion of specialised and separatist knowledge is partly to blame: Afrocentrism, Eurocentrism, Occidentalism, feminism, Marxism, deconstructionism, etc. The schools disable and disempower what was empowering and interesting about the original insights.
From: Edward W.Said: Culture & Imperialism, p.387
Vintage Books,1994.
Said mentioned India and Egypt. To many observers, India may appear to be a country which has succeeded with democracy and done fairly well on the economic front, while Egypt has had problems. But to a deeper student, it is clear that India continues to be a colony in the way it thinks and functions, imitating the West in all possible ways, while Egypt has tried to free itself from the colonial burden! It is Egypt which deserves greater sympathy and understanding!
Modi's mantra of 'development' and the manner he seeks to achieve it are but a sign of continuing intellectual enslavement to the West! He may talk in Hindi, but he is voicing Western sentiments of a by gone era. He is harping on a dying dogma. What thoughtful economists advocate is not just development, but 'sustainable' development.
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