Lately, I have been thinking more about the objectives of the project. With all our planning and practical activities now out of the way, it is time to reflect and think about how the project has gone. It is not the end of the project yet but it is helpful to reflect on why we did the project, so that our input into the proposed film will be more considered and reflective. We have reached the final leg of the project and still have our sharing to do through the film and exhibition. The thinking though is to drop the idea of a full scale exhibition.
A thread has emerged from the first workshop in the project, through to where we stand now. Dr. Cleall talked of ‘National amnesia’ about parts of Britain’s history, personified in colonial statesmen like Thomas Babbington Macaulay. The academic projects noted in an earlier blog raised similar issues, pointing to the ‘invisible’ Empire. I have come across another interesting concept which has a bearing on our understanding of the period in which our project is set. Professor Hobson from the Politics department at the University of Sheffield speaks of ‘Eurocentrism’ and I want to go into this concept in this blog and tell you how I find it exciting. So far, we have heard from historians, tracing a forgotten or hidden history, Professor Hobson talks about the politics behind the forgotten history.
What a great title he has for his talk – ‘Thinking Inter-culturally…………’
-and I think that’s what our project aims to promote, ‘inter-cultural thinking about the National Park and the environment’. I envisaged the Ganesha walk as a small step towards that end. It needs quite some elaboration to explain how, but I won’t go into that now.
Liberal internationalism is eurocentrism, constructed in the 18th and 19th century. Eurocentrism constructs a bipolar line of civilizational apartheid, between East and West. East and west are prised apart and a hierarchy formed. This brings to mind something I wrote in an earlier blog, a blog which featured the lascars or seafaring men from the 18th century. Europe’s exceptionalism as a meta narrative of the period could go some way in explaining how and why lascar history has been neglected and lost. Amitav Ghosh, the Indian author laments the loss of lascar history, and his narrative is compelling. When the West and the East were prised apart, those from the East such as the lascars, that were in the West or associated with the West, might have been ignored because they didn’t fit the idea of the West of that time. In this hierarchy, the West was seen as the best, over the rest, the East was West’s inferior, opposite, other. West (in c18th and 19th) was proclaimed as civilised, rational because of its institutions, East’s institutions were irrational.
Europe centred visually in this map (Mercator projection)
Area map of the world, where the focus falls on Africa (Peters projection)
In his book, ‘The eastern origins of Western civilisation’ Hobson argues that without the rest, there would be no West. At every single turning point, from 800 onwards through the industrialisation, there was a huge amount of things borrowed from the East – ideas, institutions, technologies, without which the West would not have managed to modernise.
There are two forms of Eurocentrism. Anti –paternalist (anti-imperialist) and paternalist eurocentrism – which is imperialist. Much of liberal international theory (but not all of it) suffers from paternal eurocentrism. Overlaid upon that is a tripartite metageography – three worlds of world politics. First world – West, i.e. Europe up to 1945 (civilised, liberal democratic institutions , liberalism capitalism, individualism, science, second world oriental despotic states (oriental autocratic states) – uncivilised, waged war and supressed their own civil societies and then the third world savage societies- anarchic black holes, hunter gather, sedentary economy.. no science, voodoo, magic. So, in summary, there existed the white West, yellow barbaric east (East Asia, Islamic world), black savage world (Africa, Australasia and Polynesia).
This metanarrative was then developed within the paternalist stream into imperialist politics. Anti-paternalists like Adam smith, Immanuel Kant didn’t do this, but anti-paternalists held the view that the others can develop, but needed the rational institutions – western civilising mission. They had a Peter Pan-type metaphor – nice innocent people who wouldn’t grow up. This discourse does not imply a world of sovereign states, what we actually have is effectively western states accorded hyper sovereignty – the right, the legitimacy to intervene in inferior eastern societies which are stripped of sovereignty. They are not civilised, so they cannot be allowed the privilege of external non-intervention. Underlying this whole discourse is the notion that the West/ Europe rose to the top all by itself, by kind of logic of imminence. Modernisation and arrival of modernity was imminent within Europe’s social structure because Europe was exceptional. Max Weber, Karl Marx – West is a self-made global millionaire that got to the top because of its own exceptional institutions. John Rawls (civilised, outlaw, burdened societies) Robert cooper – famous Liberal (postmodern states – Europe; second world- Asia, pre-modern states) Next stage is to reconvene hyper sovereign western states and conditionally sovereign eastern states (after decolonisation), and this allows for humanitarian intervention. What Hobson finds problematic about Eurocentrism is not simply the imperialist side of it all. It is actually the fundamental underlying assumption that the West knows what is best for the rest because the West got to the top all by itself through its exceptionalism and through its genius.
Hobson argues that if theories about the world are based on eurocentrism, we will end up with monological thinking. Eurocentrism is all pervasive. Intercultural thinking cannot be intercultural if it is still cloaked in Eurocentric precepts, then it can’t be intercultural, it is monocultural. That’s why Hobson has problems with soft power, although it is infinitely preferable to hard power. He says – Until we have speaking going on from all sides, and listened to as autonomous agents, rather than people who must be seen but not heard. Then I just don’t think we will get any real intercultural thinking, what we’ll just get are more and more subtle versions of civilising missions rebranded in the latest sort of nice liberal sounding phrases, such as humanitarian mission.
Soft power is a really interesting concept. Soft power makes money, it underpins branding in our modern economy. It is a brand that people can buy into, its constituent parts are brands that can be sold. The product might be Chinese but brand Chinese doesn’t sell it. It needs the soft power of Clarks or Nike to sell it. Currently, there is a Parliamentary Select Committee conducting Hearings on soft power. Ian Birrell, speaking at the Inquiry into ‘Soft Power and the UK’s Influence’ before a Parliamentary Select Committee of the same name on the 29th of July 2013 lists examples of soft power ‘I think that Britain has huge advantages worldwide in soft power. If you look at the obvious things like the English language being so dominant; if you look at things like our education links ; even if you look at newer things like music—I speak as the co-founder of Africa Express, a very successful project bringing together African and western musicians — and of course Premier League football, which is so dominant across Africa’ [http://www.parliament.uk/documents/lords-committees/soft-power-uk-influence/uc290713Ev7.pdf] It will be absolutely interesting to study soft power in terms of what it is. Is there an element of Indian curry in UK’s soft power recipe? Should there be? Is there not?
At the end of the day, we need inter cultural thinking to solve today’s global problems, and that is the bottom line.
Professor Hobson says he hasn’t exactly worked out what inter cultural thinking is. It is indeed a challenge, there are no answers yet. I would like to venture that perhaps we have laid some foundations for thinking interculturally on the environment in this project. What I also think is that we have some ideas for what can be done in the future.
Strengthening culture should also be on our agenda as a matter of priority. Intercultural thinking comes only when both/all cultures know what they stand for. To preserve, not fossilise, to promote and not dilute, are absolute preconditions. Learning and teaching culture is an important activity for community and cultural centres. They should be discerning and committed to the teaching and learning of languages, source texts, practices etc that make up culture.
Behold the people who have developed that cultural voice… Rajiv Malhotra, Devdatt Patnaik , Jay Lakhani, Swami Dayananda, and there are others….. And on that note, I will end this post.
Chamu Kuppuswamy
Hindu Samaj Heritage I & II 