World Affairs

Vol. 6, Number 2 (April-June 2002)

From Cultural Conquests and Confrontations to Dialogue of Civilisations
J C Kapur

There was no scope for a civilisational dialogue during the last millennium of conquests and colonialism. This was the era of domination of physically weaker nations and cultures. The Islamic invasions of Asia and the Spanish inroads in Latin America were followed by British and other colonialists’ rampage of North America, Asia and Africa. These were ruthlessly-administered civilising missions which were a cover for the exploitation of material and human resources. And these interventions in diverse cultural entities and styles of life continued all the way up to the Second World War. Once again this war was for the protection or the acquisition of colonial interests.

The decades after the war saw the fusion of all the colonial powers into one superpower regarded as an adversarial superstate. And the former colonies and low-technology states were encircled within a new Bretton Woods arrangement. This has now evolved into a paradigm of ‘Armament Protected Consumerism’ under unipolar control. Its domination is planned to continue through the control of finances, technology, weapons of mass destruction and through covert and overt actions. But the widening dimensions of poverty in the midst of the vertical expansion of the consumerist life styles, is catalysing serious conflicts and tensions. And with the growing disequilibrium in their socio-politco-techno-economic and security structures, most countries around the world are becoming politically or economically unstable.

Strangely some structures of religious fundamentalism were also coopted into a dedicated guerilla-fighting force to achieve certain objectives against the Soviet Union in Central Asia. After the Russian exit from Afghanistan, the same force became a well-equipped mercenary terrorist force, which could now be used against any country in the region to safeguard and promote the politico-economic and energy interests of the powers that be. With this system of trained manpower and drug money, many conflicting ambitions were taking shape. And the terrorist acts performed were regarded by some as essential for the promotion of democracy and human rights and of course to serve the free market.

Now international networks of the same fundamentalist and mercenary terror have begun to use the very same high-technology instruments against the citadel of the supporting economic and military powers. The conflict all along was for or against supremacy and to undermine others’ interests and extend your own. It is now being used, not just for politico-economic or resources gain, but also as an instrument for cultural rearrangement and civilisational conflicts as may be perceived in the larger interest of the paradigm. Thus a tool for covert operations against unpliable states has been transformed into a monster to inflict deep wounds on the entire human civilisation. A kind of Jehad [holy war] against the non-believers. Thus cultural skirmishes have now begun to get fused into a formal shape on the international stage with a thunder. If this rapidly-growing heavily-fertilised weeds of terrorism could be contained at their roots, there shall be no need for a cultural confrontation and wide cultural diversity can be sustained.

Monotheism, unipowerism, uniculturism, by their very nature or as a consequence become the breeding grounds for terrorist acts. An attempted break down of diversity, biocultural, religious or economic is always accompanied by economic, psychic or socially-violent processes, leading all civilised existence back to the Stone Age. A dialogue would imply the need for the preservation of the cultural and civilisational diversity and thus stability of the social institutions. The Indian leader, Mahatma Gandhi used to say, if the world is going to run on the principle of ‘an eye for an eye, the whole world will become blind’. In this fast-creeping blindness, civilisational dialogue must retain visions of religious and cultural diversity and harmonisation of ethical and moral flows. And in the absence of such a harmony, the forces of violence and terrorism will hijack the pathways to undesirable and unsustainable human future?

All this goes back again to the same factors of stimulated human greed and lust for power. The intense desire for conquest and the break down of the ethical and moral order are some of the issues, which all civilised people must explore at the beginning of this millennium, because states only represent power, whereas civilisation is expressed through the people. So the dialogue to be meaningful is always between civilised people. But under monotheism and unipolarism, the people are trapped between the compulsions of the consumerist states, and civilisation gets defined as the one which protects and furthers the interests of the market place. And all else becomes peripheral to be trivialised.

The words "the fault lines in civilisation will be the battle lines of [the] future" invent pernicious illusions of equating culture with consumption. So, as the consumerist’s economic system begins to regress the culture also begins to fade away, and weapons become the holy mace of civilisation. And civilisational wars were always fought in ill-defined battlefields.

In an attempt to identify civilisation as Western, Slavic, Latin American, Confucius, Hindu, Islamic or Orthodox Christian, we are in reality, trying to define deep and complex human sensitivities of ancient cultures in market terms.

The so-called Western civilisation through its own contradictions that is of outer enlargement and inner contraction has arrived at a deep sense of psychic vacuum, unable to rationalise and cope with complex self-created issues of our times. The desire to extend their material and cultural monarchy through violent means is leading to their alienation from other nations which is leading to a widening civilisational gap. The United States used the fundamentalist and mercenary zeal of certain nations and individuals to counter Communism. And while they managed to kill the outer structure of a communist state the ideal of larger human welfare still lies at the heart of all the victims of deprivation and cannot be dethroned by force.

Since many weapons have been employed to protect the consumerist paradigm by organising an international system of human rights, finance and technology, trade regimes, patents, IPR and others, all these objectives are faced with the deep inner commitments to material restraints of diverse, largely Eastern cultures. These cannot be contained within a reckless unsustainable consumerist social organisation. So these cultures needed to be transformed to conform to the needs of the market place and unipolar interests. The Indic civilisational religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism and the Asian cultures of Taoism, Confucianism, Shintoism, were all considered too weak and could be checkmated by fundamentalist forces, which could also assist in the process of deculturisation of vulnerable states. Thus the inner contradiction and interests of the paradigm are coming into conflict with other cultures. And consequently the planned cultural supremacy began to retreat and the transformation of other cultures will now have to be realised through other, more aggressive and violent instruments. So the entire process and instruments for cultural interventions have boomeranged, and as an aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001, the rich nations are not just the occupiers of their oil, and gas resources but also of the holiest of places of Islam. The issues of culture and civilisation have overtaken the politico-economic compulsions, and this illusion itself has become a reality. The dreams of the fundamental harmony and unity of book religions and evangelisation of the masses of Asia are now awakening to new realities. The promotion of the Western values, interests and culture, under one umbrella is all at the cost of cultural regression; and a cause-celebré for the growing conflict in an increasingly unequal world.

Often exploitation of other nations and peoples are being justified by equating culture with poverty. And poverty in turn is being employed as a justification for the cultural transformation of others. The human evolution is for all humans, and not for a specific religion or culture. The superiority claimed by some is of destructive arms and not culture. The expressions of economic fundamentalism are now being challenged by a religious fundamentalist match.

And some major conflicting forces are taking shape. High technology power and its instruments are becoming highly vulnerable. Thus superpower advantages are being checkmated through fundamentalist, terrorist acts, threatening all orderly processes of life and development. In this environment human relationship cannot be harmonised nor can images of the future be innovated; because everything is becoming so fluid, and is losing its shape and form and all avenues of civilised communications are being disrupted.

Victims everywhere are challenging economic inequalities. ‘An eye for an eye’ has become the logic of the market place and in this situation only the strongest and not necessarily the rational, the sane, or the wise can survive. And weapons, one more destructive than the other are coming into being, negating possibilities for an orderly discourse. What will prevail after this unending highly destructive struggle? Will it lead to a harmonious existence of diverse cultural entities or, will it relocate itself within another set of parameters to invent new reasons as starting-points for major civilisational conflicts. We cannot protect free societies and the so-called free market, with some new, unending civilisational dialogues unless we first define what we are aiming to protect and promote. And what we speak about is the truth without any hidden agendas.

The cultures enable human beings to create a free and orderly flow of their lives and to enable them to connect their past to their future through their present actions. And also to heighten and expand their own consciousness within their larger cultural frame to relate to the consciousness of the ever-expanding cosmos. And all this unfettered by any consumerist illusions. A pattern of life evolves with its many parameters of physical well-being and sane development, intellectual achievement, aesthetics, psychic and spiritual conditioning, to keep the human beings on the path of outer contraction and stabilisation and inner expansion. The human conditioning is at present frozen at the material plane, depriving humans of the processes of self-realisation and upward movement. And all this has been placed at the mercy of the market place, in a confrontational mode with culture itself the victim. We have to seek new formative and creative principles within our unconscious selves to open our minds to other levels of reality. Right in our midst are societies where collective consciousness was the repository of the inherited experience of humanity, manifesting itself particularly in the myths, legends and dreams of the ancient men in many continents.

But we are busy enlarging the areas of confrontation at many levels through the media and by other means, to win the hearts of people through visible, material, pleasure-seeking rewards. Some fundamentalist religions have gone a step further and have transferred these rewards to life after death, so that struggle for a cause becomes a highly inviting sacrifice. There is thus a continuous search for vulnerability of peoples and states by the terrorist networks. A physical and physiological war continues with high technology weapons and a clarion call to strike at vulnerable points, and to bridge the technology and lethality gaps with the targeted powers. By now a vast international network of religiously-inspired terrorist groups have come into being, threatening the security of the entire human family.

Many in Europe like R Husserl and later Teilhard De Chardin proclaimed that the Europeanisation of mankind was the destiny of the Earth.

But the limits of Europe’s mission and its universality were exploded by the Second World War and the loss of their exploited backyards, the colonies. The United States with a diluted mixture of European culture and modernity and upgradation of European Science and Technology became the real winner of the Second World War, and within half a century transformed the very idiom of European science and culture and overwhelmed and Americanised it. In scaling these heights, they have descaled its depth. They created a new paradigm, which was ruthlessly delivered and is being hesitantly accepted by all which has been re-christened as Western culture. The old European culture is now superseded by an American culture redefined as modern westernised culture.

As a part of the globalisation process this modern Western culture is being promoted as a way of life in the remotest tribal villages in Africa, Asia, Latin America. While disrupting the local traditions and cultural mores of these remote communities, a new path is being chartered for them and often the process is considered complete with the appearance of Coca-Cola, fast food joints or a few missionaries of charity. A world dominated by science and technology, driven by blind rationality, overpowered by instincts of mastery and calculation is being imposed upon an environment of myths and legends and deep spiritual and cosmic connection. This externally imposed culture disbursed through globalisation is stirring up ethnic, religious and parochial instincts world-wide. And in such an environment meetings and dialogue of the culture and religions of the world must escape the process of gross trivialisation of the sacred.

The ability and power to steamroll other cultures and traditions, rarely fulfils or invigorates the consumerist culture nor does it stem the tide of the rapid deculturisation of the consumer societies.

Therefore, neither the languages of science nor that of metaphysics nor that of historical understanding can provide the proper foundations of dialogue in which all these parameters will themselves have to be questioned. Unless we can transcend beyond the concept of a globalised world, under a unipolar power with a regressing cultural frame; the process of trivialisation of cultures and apotheosis of the deculturalised armament protected consumerist culture will continue to destabilise the human system. And so where is the dialogue if such a non-culture has to provide the context and the categories for the exploration of all traditions of thought.

The genesis of these retrogate concepts that the globalised world will have to westernise itself or Americanise itself began with some European philosopher who insisted that the Orient would have to Europeanise itself, because Europeans are the makers of history. So the larger role of culture except as a colonial tool was subordinated.

The events from the commencement of the twenty-first century have amply demonstrated that human destiny was never frozen nor is it now. In the fluidity of the world environment, the centricity of nations and history have lost their form.

From the untapped voices of silence hidden in the archives and hearts of the cosmic conditioned tribals there may yet emerge a whisper brightening our dreams of ‘Vasudev Kutumbakam’ – the world is a family. And this dialogue must seek new pathways away from suicidal highways.

New Delhi
June 2002