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World Affairs
Transcending the Clash of Civilisations
J C Kapur
‘An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind’, said Mahatma Gandhi. The violence growing worldwide is accelerating the pace of this tragedy. For Gandhi truth and non-violence were the only sane options to settle disputes and fight for freedom, human rights and dignity. The salt satyagraha, a political movement based on non-violence to break the unjust and illegal salt laws imposed by the British brought hundreds of thousands of men, women and children out of their workplaces and homes to challenge the colonial authority. And this one act gave the Indian freedom movement a determined mass base, and marked the beginning of a great experiment in search of a humane and compassionate social order. It did not destroy human life or property. Nor did it inflict wounds on the colonial power. But helped them with an honourable exit.
We are now under the thralldom of a paradigm of ‘armament protected consumerism’ which amongst other parameters has also perfected techniques for the moronisation of the masses, ‘ramboisation’ of governance and marginalisation of the intellectuals. The intellectuals could not step out of the universities except in support of the paradigm. The work of Samuel Huntington and others on the ‘Clash of Civilisations’ and ‘Culture Matters’ was one such effort. They put together a new strategy for world domination, by highlighting and exploiting ethnic, religious and cultural divides. And also by creating a divide between peoples and nations. The Gandhian search for truth and non-violence has no place at the centre-point in the task of creating weapons of mass destruction and fostering media dispensation of manufactured truths. The compulsions to expand the consumerist culture are forcing the trend towards the globalisation of the market place. And through the denigration of other social arrangements, and cultures, an attempt is being made to bring the entire world into a single civilisational model with its own definitions of democracy, human rights and justice.
These visions and the strategies for their realisation are being enforced outside the international system or law, and through the will of small oligarchies within the unipolar system. This is resulting in widespread violence, terrorism, mass deprivation and preemptive wars against helpless countries and innocent men, women and children. It is further bringing about the loss of nations’ sovereignty and people’s identities, environmental crises and an unpredictable future. How can this genie being let loose by human greed, lust for power and illusion of world domination be controlled, through a dialogue or other peaceful non-violent means?
A dialogue of cultures presupposes plurality and a desire to seek new and more harmonious and sustainable possibilities for organising human affairs. Culture and civilisation have often been considered interchangeable. Culture is refined appreciation of the religious tradition, customs, institutions or aesthetic achievements of a nation or a group. It emphasises the individual rather than the society, prototype-ideas rather than their conversion into mass production. It is a kind of software on which civilisational forms are structured, while civilisation is an advanced stage or system of human, social development that translates cultural and other parameters into a system of social organisation, often spiritually sterile though efficient in mass organisation, aiming for a state structured on its own needs and priorities.
For centuries, through conquests and colonialism other nations and cultures have been exploited. And whatever escaped that organised denigration and ransacking is now becoming the victim of aggressive globalisation and ‘reformatting’ into new consumeristic cultural modes: supportive instruments to achieve the planned but unstated objectives of globalisation.
Without respect for other cultures, a culture of global harmony, with an unexploitative compassionate and humane order cannot be realised.
In reality what we are confronted with today is not a clash of civilisations, but the need to preserve the diversity of cultures from being hijacked and transformed into a single ‘armament protected consumerist’ civilisation. We need to save our planet from the consequential disasters of the kind that we are being subjected to today.
With these concerns, we requested some scholarly personalities and visionaries to participate in this task of ‘Transcending The Clash of Civilisations’.