India and Israel Against Islamic Terror

PART - IV
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Civilizational Fault lines
Before early nineteenth century state boundaries were decided

by the princes of small kingdoms based on their ambitious,

military might and expediencies, as given in the teachings of

Machiavelli in the European context and Kautilya in the Indian.

Their two books, The Prince and Arthshastra were the Bible of

state policy in those days. Later from early nineteenth century

onwards a new phenomenon called ”nationalism” determined

statecraft and political boundaries. Nationalism was defined as

the pursuit of a common objective, feeling of oneness, sharing,

past history, ethnicity, and a common striving for future that

moved a community. Thus emerged various nations in the world,

both western and eastern-Canada, the United States and

countries of South America, Western Europe, Middle East, Asia

and far east. They all had their own national forms. This

continued till the beginning of the Russian Revolution. After

Marx_a_ndEngels re-wrote history in terms of economic

determinism, ideologies transcended national and political

boundaries. In consequence, three world groups emergedcapitalist

west, including Western Europe and countries of

America, Japan and South East Asia, while another block

subscribing to Marxist ideologies of communism came into being

and coalesced around the Soviet Russia including East European

countries, Cuba and China. The remaining countries untouched
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by polarization around these two nodes, declared themselves as

the third block. Non-aligned and not attached to any of these

two capitalist and communist poles nor encumbered by any

military alliances spawned by them, they created a political space

for themselves. This era lasted till the break up of the Soviet

Union into independent states and the fall from grace of

communist ideology, except for some anachronistic entities like

Cuba, Indian communists and the left. This is the present scene.

But a New World order is in the making, which will be based

on the civilizational identities and their fault lines. The originator

of this theory is Prof. Samuel P. Huntington of Harvard University,

who in his book ”The Clash of Civilizations and the remaking of

World Order” has expounded the theory that the future politics

and the world order will be decided on the basis of civilizational

identity. I can take some consolation from this thought, which

in my own way I had expressed in my book ” India Betrayed

- The Role of Nehru”. There I had emphasized that the

civilizational entities such as Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and

Judaism will be over-arching national identity to form patterns of

civilizational formations. To quote Micheal Dibdin:
”There can be no true friends without true enemies. Unless

we hate what we are not, we cannot love what we are.

These are the old truths we are painfully rediscovering after

a century and more of sentimental cant. Those who deny

them deny their family, their heritage, their culture, their

birthright, and their very selves! They will not lightly be

forgotten.”
The running thread in all that follows is the hypothesis that

cultural identities, which at the broadest level conform to

civilizational identity, are and will be shaping the future world

dispensation in the post-cold war era. Prof. Huntington has

divided the world broadly into nine civilizational entities viz, the

Western, which comprises Western Europe and North America;

the Latin American; the African, which includes the southern

half of Africa, areas south of Sahara and some sub-Saharan

states; the Islamic Asian nations; the orthodox Christian, which

includes areas east of Germany upto the whole of Russia and
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the Bahrain straits; the Sinic or the Chinese which includes the

vvhole of China, the two Koreas and further north; the Hindu

comprising India and Nepal; the Buddhist comprising some

Southeast Asian countries and finally Japanese.
The learned Professor, however, forgot to include Judaism,

which will be even more important than the Buddhist

civilization of Southeast Asian countries. According to

Dr. Henry Kissinger:
”The international system of the twentyfirst century will

contain at least six major powers- The United States, Europe,

China, Japan, Russia and probably India -as well as a

multiplicity of medium sized and smaller countries.”
To this list we shall like to include two important civilizational

entities i.e. Islam and Judaism. The rivalry of earlier supreme

powers will be replaced by that of the civilizations. Prof.

Huntington defines the nature of civilization in the following

manner:
”Human history is the history of civilizations. It is impossible

to think of the development of humanity in any other terms.

The story stretches through generations of civilizations from

ancient Sumerian and Egyptian to Classical and Meso

American to Christian and Islamic civilizations and through

successive manifestations of Cynic and Hindu civilizations.

Throughout history civilizations have provided the broadest

identifications for people. As a result, the causes, emergence,

rise, interactions, achievements, decline and fall of civilizations

have been explored at length by distinguished historians,

sociologists and anthropologists including among others, Max

Weber, Emile Durkheim, Oswald Spengler, Pitirim Sorokin,

Arnold Toynbee, Alfred Weber, A.L. Kroeber, Philip Bagby,

Carroll Quigley, Rushton, Coulborn, Christopher Dawson,

S.N. Eisenstadt, Fernand Braudel, William H. McNeil, Adda

Bozeman, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Felipe Ferman-dezArmesto.

These and other writers have produced a

voluminous, learned and sophisticated literature devoted to

the comparative analysis of civilizations. Differences in
302 INDIA AND ISRAEL CHAPTF
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perspective, methodology, focus and concepts pervade thi

literature. Yet broad agreement also exists on central

propositions concerning the nature, identity, and dynamics

of civilizations.”
Civilization, which is our concern in this chapter, is ”a cultural

entity’. Nineteenth century German thinkers drew a sharp

distinction between civilization, which involved mechanics

technology and material factors, and culture, which involved

values, ideals, and the higher intellectual, artistic, moral qualities

of a society. This distinction has persisted in German thought but

has not been accepted elsewhere. Some anthropologists have

even reversed the relation and conceived of cultures as

characteristic of primitive, unchanging, non-urban societies, while

more complex, developed, urban, and dynamic societies are

civilizations. These efforts to distinguish culture and civilization,

however, have not caught on, and, outside Germany, there is an

overwhelming agreement with Braudel that it is ”delusory to

wish in the German way to separate culture from its foundation,

civilization.”
Civilization and culture are indivisible, referring as they do

to the overall way of life of the people. The present cry of

cultural pluralism in India touted by our so-called secularists and

leftists is a contradiction in terms. To quote Huntington again: ”a

civilization is a culture writ large. They both involve the values,

norms, instructions, and modes of thinking to which successive

generations in a given society have attached primary importance.

A civilization is, for Braudel, a space, a ’cultural area’ ’a collection

of cultural characteristics and phenomena”. Wallerstein defines

it as ”a particular concatenation of worldview, customs, structures,

and culture (both material culture and high culture) which forms

some kind of historical whole and, which coexists (if not always

simultaneously) with other varieties of this phenomenon.” A

civilization is, according to Dawson, the product of ”a particular

original process of cultural creativity, which is the work of a

particular people.” While for Durkheim and Mauss, it is ”a kind

of moral milieu encompassing a certain number of nations, each

national culture being only a particular form of the whole”.
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Another emphasis on the synergy between culture and

civilization is provided by Athenians when they talk about the

Persians:
”For there are many and powerful considerations that forbid

us to do so, even if we were inclined. First and chief, the

images and dwellings of the gods, burnt and laid ruins, this

we must need avenge to the utmost of our power, rather

than make terms with the man who has perpetrated such

deeds. Secondly, the Grecian race being of the same blood

and same language, and the temples of the gods and sacrifices

in common; and our similar customs; for the Athenians to

become betrayers of these would not be well.”
The most important component of a civilization is religion.

History is a witness that in spite of common ethnicity and

language, people slaughtered each other, as happened in

Lebanon, the former Yugoslavia, and the Indian subcontinent.
Physical characteristic and races do not form an essential

ingredient of a civilization. A race can be divided into civilizations

and the same civilization can have more than one race, just as

Christianity and Islam have more than one race. The crucial

distinction among human groups are related to their beliefs,

institutions, values and social structure and not the shapes of

their heads, size and colour. Civilizations are comprehensive

inasmuch as they are constituent unit and have no locus stand!

without reference to the encompassing civilisations. A civilization

is a totality. According to Melko;
”Civilizations have a certain degree of integration. Their parts

are defined by their relationship to each other and to the

whole. If the civilization is composed of states, these states

will have more relation to one another than they will do to

states outside the civilization. They might fight more, and

engage more frequently in diplomatic relations. They will be

more interdependent economically. There will be pervading

aesthetic and philosophical currents.”
As per the earlier listing the following civilizations outside the

Euro American can be identified today:
304 INDIA AND ISRAEL CHAPTF
Rig
Sinic: The Chinese civilization dating back to 1500 B r

or even earlier, is mainly dominated by Confucianism

and the term ”Sinic” aptly describes the Chinese

community outside China in Southern Asia, Vietnam

and Korea.
Japanese: This culture emerged out of the

conglomeration of Chinese-Japanese culture into a

distinctive identity between 100 and 400 A.D. And like

Chinese Confucianism is anchored on Shintoism.
Hindu: This is described in great detail under Indian

History and related issues.
klamic: Originating in Arabian peninsula in seventh

century, Islam spread west and eastward, covering the

areas described earlier. Because of its fast spread many

distinct cultures or sub-civilizations exist within Islam such

as Arab, Turkey, Persian and Malay.
African: The northern half of Africa is basically Islamic,

while the southern half comprising the natives and the

European and later English settlers created a distinct

society in South Africa as its core.
Apart from four world religions i.e. Christianity, Islam,

Hinduism and Confucianism, Buddhism does not really form a

separate civilization as far as population and area are concerned,

and therefore, its role in making or unmaking the new world

order is minimal.
The above analysis and the treatise on the clash of civilizations

by Professor Huntington though sound in outline, suffers from

some glaring infirmities in details. He has failed to emphasize

adequately the importance of Israel. Possibly due to reasons of

its small size and population as also its supposed status as a

satellite state of the U.S., which it is not, Israel is bound to rise

like a phoenix out of the ashes of its past as it has done so often

in the long march of history. There is absolutely no doubt that

Judaic civilization will emerge as a potential power center, fueled

by the inherent strength of its civilization and its mighty power

of survival through millennia. The learned Professor misses the
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point that the durability of a civilization does not depend merely

on its economic wealth and technology, natural resources, large

size and military might, but the power of its institutions and the

dedication of its people to the identity and substance of their

culture. India and Israel stand alone in this regard as they share

these attributes in ample measure. Greece, Rome, Egypt, Babyton,

Assyria and Persia were great empires’ of their time, but where

are they today? Hutlhe Judaic kingdom or the Hindu land has

stayed not merely as a geographical expression of a state but as

a civilizational entity with a glorious past that overshadows its

present and the impulse of its history ever drives it to greater

endeavours. The U.S. centric West is a fairly young civilization in

comparison. Its state has military might; but so had Greece and

Rome. The fault lines in their structures were evident even at the

height of their power. But the appetite for material gains and a

lack of spiritual content and a shared belief of the people in

their value systems were the cause of their downfall. Unless

cured immediately, the U.S. centric Western societies will reach

a state of terminal decay, mainly due to a philistinic over insistence

on the material factors, consumerism and abhorrence of spiritual

values.
One can safely eliminate the Slavic Orthodox, Latin American

and even African civilizations for their lack of roots, continuity

and uniqueness of their spiritual values. Japan though identified

as a separate civilization, is very close to the West in all its

thought and practice except a token adherence to its history

and Shintoism. This ambivalence will give Japanese civilization a

doubtful longevity.
The simple teachings in the profound thought of divinity

and human virtues propagated by Prophet Mohammed have

gradually been forgotten and replaced by a blind adherence to

the letter of Koran and Hadis. The form remains but the spirit

is lost. The stranglehold of the clergy7~ulema and the vested

interesLfif. the ummah have led to the fossilization of Islam into

a rigid time warp. Any move towards modernity or rational

development is stonewalled by these interests through their edicts

and fatwas, which shackle the minds of the unquestioning masses
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