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THE CLASH OF CIVILISATIONS OR DIALOGUE
Prof. Maria Krzysztof Byrski
(Warsaw University, Institute of Oriental Studies)
One may not necessarily share a fairly common conviction that the 11th of September 2001 was a turning point in human history. Yet, one question should certainly be answered, i.e., whether this event should be treated only as a crime committed by a group of people belonging to a global network known as al-Kaida and at least in some measure inspired by Islamic fundamentalism or whether it should be treated also as one of the important 'signs of the time'? I for one am of the opinion that it certainly is the sign of time too.
Many of us impressed very much by Professor Samuel Huntington's idea of the clash of civilisations tend to believe that the Manhattan disaster very much confirms Huntington's assumption about different civilisations being - due to different value systems - natural potential enemies. Mohammed Atta's confessions bearing a definite stamp of religious inspiration - even if misplaced one - fit well into the framework of Huntington's theory. Yet, some doubts persist. Huntington himself declares that civilisations are cultural and not political entities. Although he is also of an opinion that sometimes, like in the case of China or Japan both entities are tantamount. Nevertheless it is too early to generalise and both the Western and the Islamic civilisations torn apart by internal conflicts seem not yet ready to fit completely into the scheme proposed by Samuel Huntington. I am of course aware that his proposal concerns the XXIst century and as such, does not have to explain fully the present day situation but even so I fail to share with the eminent Author his feeling of imminence of such development of political scenario for the coming century.
To my mind the suicidal attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York should be understood as an overture of globalisation. There can be little doubt that this act perpetrated by people dissatisfied with the situation in Western Asia is reminiscent of events in any state where dissatisfied people from peripheral regions try to seek justice in the capital city and if they feel that their grievances are not properly considered they are ready to commit violent acts to vent their disillusionment and anger. The magnitude of violence of course is proportional to the responsibility for the wellbeing in the global village that willy-nilly is ascribed to the dominant Western technological civilisation in general and the USA in particular. Such way of venting grievances is characteristic of countries where people put little confidence in democratic procedures and it should be treated as a very important signal of the need to modify the way the given state is governed. I therefore believe that notwithstanding prompt and stern police action - I stress - police action - taken against the perpetrators of such acts, the situation in Western Asia has to be very carefully analysed and suitable adjustments of policy (especially American one) in the region contemplated. USA is an obvious target here, for being the only global power left, rightly or wrongly, it is considered responsible. But the 'Manhattan warning' has been addressed [not so much by its perpetrators as by Providence itself] to all states - players of international politics who - without sufficient degree of responsibility - and very often with very selfish motivation - strive to safeguard the interest of their particular countries without much thought given to what will be the results of their policies for other peoples and other countries. Very often such countries condone ruthless policies of their mammoth companies and in order to secure uninterrupted flow of oil, for instance, are ready to support status quo, which ensures that flow, but may not necessarily be the best for the countries concerned. Let me be clear, all this should never be taken as even in the most distant way justifying any acts of terror. It is only meant to analyse and describe the mechanism behind such acts the way I understand it.
Now, any responsible government of the country will try to assist the development of those regions which face difficulties and stagnation. I should like to stress that in such case the allocation of funds can never be the only solution, if earlier the mechanisms of the populace helping itself, are not put into operation. My country is the best example in hand. Even billions of euro pumped into it, will be squandered, if we lack will, skill and proper drive to put them to good use. The confidence with which Poland can look towards the future integration into the European Union, stems from the fact that my countrymen share the same value-system which prompted the development of Western Europe. The cornerstone of this system is precisely the very idea of development itself.
The European civilisation conditioned by a particular character of its habitat and most certainly by suitable aptitude of Europeans themselves, which made them respond to lethal for almost nine months climate with a drive to generate and store additional energy, put its entire effort into evolving more and more perfect ways of making such energy available during the long winter period. It began with keeping fire burning at the entrance into the cave where our forefathers lived and it ended with the nuclear reactor. While initially the only motivation - and very legitimate at that - behind it was to survive, later on this development has become to be considered the purpose in itself, especially when the aspect of profit to be gained in the process came to the forefront. This notion of profit dominated our thinking about the development to such an extent that the awareness of the need to bridle uncontrolled development downed upon the international community only recently and as result of this process the idea of sustainable development has been conceived.
There is one more important effect of this process of development dominating the thinking of the Western technological civilisation. It is the development of healthcare techniques and resulting from it hope of eliminating suffering and extending human life. The fallacy of physical immortality has become obsession with the Western world, which more or less lost its faith in the immortality of soul coupled with the acceptance of the unavoidable mortality of the body. Making things ever higher, bigger (also money), broader, larger, faster and longer lasting (in the last case including life) is the clarion call of our civilisation. Few in the Western world seriously ask themselves the question what is its use for the individual monad of consciousness encased in each one of us and sometimes called soul? Few among us would be ready to share with the ancient Indians a conviction that immortality for man is to live the full span of life (whatever be its duration) and to be happy.
To conclude I believe that the crux of the tension in the world of today lays in the fact that very many people all over it, fascinated by the technological civilisation believe in practically an unbridled development, only for the sake of a sort of camouflage adding to it the adjective - sustainable. While many other people more traditionally minded and often dominating in the societies especially of Asia, would rather prefer to stress sustenance and not development. Thus the main line of confrontation is not so much dividing civilisations as those people (often within one civilisation) all over the world who would wish to sustain development and those who would prefer to develop sustenance. If I were to refer this to the symbolic by now twin towers of New York, I would say that instead of constructing two buildings hundred and ten floors tall, there should be constructed twenty buildings eleven floors tall. Such project would permit many more people to be involved in the construction work in many more localities. Global responsibility puts at the threshold of all countries representing technological civilisation - not only Western - a challenge to reformulate priorities; intensive development has to be replaced with the extensive one. The global village home cannot be built in such a way that one of its walls becomes hundred and ten floors tall and other walls hardly show themselves above the fundaments.
Wisdom of ancient Greece left to us a mythical tale of Ikarus the son of Dedalus, who mindless of the warnings of his father, flew too high up into the sky. The wax of his wings melted from the heat of the sun and he fell down to his death into the sea. Technological civilisation should be less sure of itself, for the Manhattan disaster largely was possible because of the means this very civilisation itself left at the disposal of the terrorists. Yet, these means may prove their wax-like fragility. The twin towers of New York melted like the two wings of Ikarus. Shouldn't we take the warning? Can we find a country and a people more suitable to issue the warning than Turkey herself so much experienced by devastating earthquakes and situated at the borderline of Asia and Europe. On her territory, since the beginning of history, great civilisations have been both co-operating and fighting. To my mind there is nothing to prove that it is only fighting that will be the destiny of Euro-Asian relations in the current century. One of the very important tests that the European Union will have to pass in this respect will be the admission of Turkey into it. Europe should better think twice before closing her door for this country. It is so because the tension between development and sustenance will have to be defused by each and every civilisation in close co-operation with one another. I hardly can see a better qualified country and society to help Europe understand the Muslim world and to help Muslim world understand Europe!
Yet I hardly have any title whatsoever to delve on this problem, since the proper field of my interest is India. It is from the comparison of these two great civilisations: European and Indian, that I draw my optimism as to the perspectives of inter-civilisation dialogue. Even a very rough comparison of both of them is enough to notice their basic structural similarity. Geographically both are huge subcontinents of Asia inhabited by multiethnic population, speaking diverse languages, following a spectre of very different customs and habits, having distinctly different dietary practices, professing an assortment of deeply differing religious confessions although within a common framework of universally shared value system. On the top of that the peoples of each of the two share one aesthetic sensitivity which accounts for a free transfer and exchange within each subcontinent of what we would be tempted to call - cultural commodities: music, dance, theatre, fine arts, literature and recently, most prominently, film. The process of a sort of 'coagulation' of both civilisations seen from a historical perspective makes them also look very much alike. In both cases during the classical period the cornerstone of civilisation was laid in the form of literary achievement in Greek and Latin in Europe and in Sanskrit and Pali in India. While in Europe the religious value system has been mainly based on the Bible in India it was the Veda that provided the hard core of religious thinking. Notwithstanding these striking similarities we have to be aware of differences mainly stemming from the fact that while European civilisation needed for its survival and development, beyond and above natural sources of energy, the additional, artificial ones, India thanks to her benevolent climate could develop very refined and sophisticated civilisation without the need to tap man-made sources of energy. Consequently the clarion call of traditional Indian civilisation has become sustenance which is called there dharma, while such call for Europe is development also called progress. It is tempting to consider both civilisations as twins separated right after the birth and brought up in different homes. The fact that both belong to one large linguistic Indo-European family makes such a comparison at least in certain measure justified.
The arguments presented above smack of a highly theoretical, academic debate with little - if any at all - relevance for current politics. Yet, there is one dimension in which such debate may acquire unexpected urgency and weight. It is obvious that both of them face very similar challenge of how to reconcile the ambitions to stand by traditional tribal identities with the political tendency to organise supra-tribal states. In case of Europe it is the process of building European Union and in case of Indian Subcontinent it is solving the Indo-Pakistan conflict so painfully affecting Kashmir and having an overall negative influence upon the situation in South Asia.
Before we tackle this problem let us first try to answer a question in what way the said tribal identity affects the political situation on the one hand in Europe and on the other in South Asia? The culprit in the first case is nation and in the second caste. Please, kindly note that the etymology of both terms is the same if we use the proper word for the caste which is jati, a derivative of the verbal root jan - to be born. The etymological source of the term nation is Latin natus - born. In India the tribal identity coupled with the process of transferring hereditary skills from the father to the son gave in effect birth to jati - the caste. In Europe the tribal identity found its best expression and realisation in the form of a state. Each respectable nation has to have its own state! In both cases in more or less rigid way blood relation determines belonging.
In India Muslim community could have never been fully integrated in the traditional social fabric of the cast system, practically because of one reason - the problem of ritualistic purity. Muslims refused to renounce beef-eating and therefore being treated as impure they have been considered outcasts by the orthodox Hindus. They themselves in turn in a way characteristic of all Westerns were unable to recognise positive aspects of the cast system which could have permitted them to adjust themselves the way Christians of St. Thomas and their own Arab brethren in faith also did in Kerala. This lack of integration at the moment of withdrawal of the British resulted in such measure of insecurity on the considerable part of the Muslim minority, that it demanded a separate state for itself. How far it has been an imperfect solution, the present state of affairs in the Subcontinent is the best proof of. Especially that even after partition India remained the second state in the world having the largest Muslim population.
In Europe on the other hand the notion of the unitary nation-state as the main factor organising social life, is responsible for two bloody wars and many local conflicts. It is also responsible for Europe's inability to integrate Jews, who without their own territory could never hope to have their own nation-state. Currently it makes the European integration a very tortuous process for it seems impossible for many Europeans to accept a perspective of final divorce of a state from a nation.
Now, in South Asia as the result of inadequacy of the traditional social system, unitary nation-states-like entities appeared and even the political elite of India herself likes to perceive their country in similar categories, while declaring an extremely negative attitude towards the cast system. What is interesting the tendency to form separate states has never been connected there with linguistic differences so important in nation-state building in Europe but rather with religious motives which have direct bearing on the way a given community perceives her role and position in the society at large. The painful outcome of this is the current situation in Kashmir. While the best proof of the lack of state-building urge of linguistic communities is the fact that none of them demands independence in contradistinction to the Sikhs for instance, some of whom toyed with the idea, though they share their Punjabi language with their Hindu compatriots.
In Europe on the other hand there is a growing tendency among lesser national communities such as Catalonians, Basques, Scots, Welsh, different ethnic groups in the Balkans, Silesians in my own country and last but not least Chechens in Russia to demand in more or less intensive or even sometimes violent manner the right to form independent nation-states.
What seems of prime importance for both civilisations is to find how to contain these aspirations in such a way that will bestow upon the communities in question a feeling of security and also give their members a sense of belonging without necessarily having to create for them a separate state machinery. State in such case should be an agency entrusted with the responsibility to guard harmonious coexistence and co-operation between such communities. It is exactly how the state was conceived in ancient India versus the jatis, i.e., casts, the identity of which the king was supposed to guard.
While on the one hand the European idea of a nation proved in some way useful to solve - although in very inconclusive and imperfect way - certain political problems in South Asia, on the other hand the idea of jati (caste) seems to provide safeguards of identity without claiming for the particular community separate statehood. It is precisely this aspect of it that may be very interesting in the process of building in future one European state.
A dialogue between two civilisations and sharing their particular experiences without prejudice and with an open mind may help to bring peace both to Europe and to South Asia. While Europe will have to treat her nations more like jatis (casts) but without unjustified hierarchy breeding scorn, India will have see the usefulness of nation-statelike units for her different communities but without destructive xenophobia, egoism and belligerence which could threaten the present supra-national character of Indian state.
The Muslim world could perhaps participate in this grand debate contributing its idea of qaum and umma in their universal dimensions. I trust that if by common effort of our civilisations we manage to solve the basic problem of reconciling tribal identity and its political aspirations with the need to organise supra-national states we shall be better equipped to face the global challenge which the confrontation of the attitude of development and the attitude of sustenance pose. This is why I hope Professor Samuel Huntington is not right.
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