--- Radhakrishnan Nair <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi all, > This interesting and scholarly article appeared in > The Hindu today under the title 'Imperial > apologists peddle poisonous fairytale' by > Priyamvada Gopal. > http://www.hindu.com/2006/06/29/stories/2006062903831100.htm > > Excerpts: > > A wilful ignorance of other people's cultures and > histories encourages the notion that freedom, > democracy and tolerance are intrinsically > Western. As Professor Amartya Sen has argued, the > subcontinent has long been home to traditions of > free-thinking and debate. Participatory governance > was not Britain's gift (recall Gandhi's > indigenous village republics), even if parliamentary > democracy as an institutional form was adopted in > some ex-colonies. Free trade is another mythical > Western contribution to world history. Amitav Ghosh > has reconstructed the forgotten history of a vibrant > trade culture between medieval India and Africa. > Mario observes: > Radha's "scholarly" sources are absolutely correct and I have to commend tham for their fair and balanced use of evidence. > As the histories of feudal Japan, China and pre-colonial India prove, freedom, democracy and tolerance are intrinsically Eastern, as is free thinking, open debate and participatory government - except for the peasants, women and untouchables. And it was the Eastern democracies that developed written constitutions and Bills of Rights to protect even the smallest minority among them - other than the aforementioned peasants, women and untouchables. > No doubt that free trade occurred way before Adam Smith and the Western economists, who actually copied their principles of free trade from the East. > Let's not forget to thank the West, particularly the Great Satan, later re-incarnated as George W. Bush in 1946, for inventing totaliarianism and socialism that was then imposed on the old Czarist Russia, and feudal India and China for low those many wasted decades. The Czars in Russia, Rajahs in India and feudal chiefs in China were the epitome of freedom and democracy. > Radha's sources continue: > > Indeed, one legacy of European colonialism that we > all reckon with is the self-fulfilling prophecy of > the "clash of civilisations." The claim that east > and west are bound to come into conflict is merely > an extension of imperial practice which found it > useful to seal off porous cultures into fixed > categories. This tragic "lie of the > colonial situation," as Frantz Fanon called it, > rebounds on us tragically in the terror unleashed > in the name of Islam and George W. Bush's "war on > terror." If we are to undo the destructive legacies > of empire, it won't do to invest celebratory > falsifications with credibility. To make sense of a > shared present and look towards a more humane > future, we need to start with a little informed > honesty about the past. > Mario observes: > More brilliant insights from Radha's schorlarly sources. One can almost hear the music in the background. > The Mahabharat describes a period of milk and honey, peace and prosperity. Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, Persian Empire and Mughal Empire all reigned over periods of global peace and prosperity for all, where everyone treated the lowest of the low with the utmost dignity and respect - except for the peasants, women and untouchables. Temples and mosques were built side by side, sometimes one on top of each other:-)) No one needed Golden Rules to guide them. Those were the days. > Then came the European colonists and the clash of civilizations that the East has never recovered from!!! > The colonists are gone some generations ago, but their "destructive legacies of empire" remain because they destroyed forever the ability of the former colonies to think straight. Destroyed forever was all the intrinsic Eastern freedom and democracy, the free speech and open debate - except for the peasants, women and untouchables - all that vibrant free trade that was the hallmark of the advanced Eastern cultures. > The brains of the East had been fried beyond repair by the colonists - except for wise sages that survived the intellectual onslaught, like Priyamvada Gopal, Amartya Sen, Amitabh Ghosh and Frantz Fanon [Frantz Fanon? What's HE doing in this crowd? A guilt complex perhaps?] who remember how it used to be, but cannot ever be again, thanks to the Western colonists. > Of course, no ode to the wise and benevolent, and now downtrodden, East can be complete without mentioning the Great Satan, George W. Bush, re-incarnated in human form in 1946. Like those other evil white men, Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman before him, this evil imperialist has once again unleashed the dogs of war and of terror, which, under the benign leadership of Osama and Saddam, were sleeping peacefully with real live virgins by their side, until this human devil showed up to disturb the peace and quiet of the world. > >
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