Development as Freedom (40 page)

What, then, do we conclude from this? Certainly Kautilya is no democrat, no egalitarian, no general promoter of everyone’s freedom. And yet, when it comes to characterizing what the most favored people—the upper classes—should get, freedom figures quite prominently. Denying personal liberty to the upper classes (the so-called Arya) is seen as unacceptable. Indeed, regular penalties, some of which are heavy, are specified for the taking of such adults or children in indenture, even though the slavery of the existing slaves is seen as perfectly acceptable.
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To be sure, we do not find in Kautilya anything like the clear articulation that Aristotle provides of the importance of free exercise of capability. But the focusing on freedom
is clear enough in Kautilya as far as the upper classes are concerned. It contrasts with the governmental duties to the lower orders, which take the paternalistic form of public attention and state assistance for the avoidance of acute deprivation and misery. However, insofar as a view of a good life emerges in all this, it is one that is entirely consistent with a freedom-valuing ethical system. The domain of that concern is, to be sure, confined to the upper groups of society, but this is not radically different from the Greek concern with free men as opposed to slaves or women. In respect to coverage, Kautilya differs from the universalist Ashoka, but not entirely from the particularist Aristotle.

I have been discussing in some detail the political ideas and practical reason presented by two forceful, but very different, expositions in India respectively in the fourth and the third century
B.C.
, because their ideas in turn have influenced later Indian writings. But we can look at many other authors as well. Among powerful expositors and practitioners of tolerance of diversity in India must of course be counted the great Moghul emperor Akbar, who reigned between 1556 and 1605. Again, we are not dealing with a democrat, but with a powerful king who emphasized the acceptability of diverse forms of social and religious behavior, and who accepted human rights of various kinds, including freedom of worship and religious practice, that would not have been so easily tolerated in parts of Europe in Akbar’s time.

For example, as the year 1000 in the Muslim Hejira calendar was reached in 1591–1592, there was some excitement about it in Delhi and Agra (not unlike what is happening right now as the year 2000 in the Christian calendar approaches). Akbar issued various enactments at this juncture of history and these focused, inter alia, on religious tolerance, including the following:

Again, the domain of tolerance, while religion-neutral, was not universal in other respects, including in terms of gender equality, or equality between younger and older people. The enactment went on to argue for the forcible repatriation of a young Hindu woman to her father’s family if she had abandoned it in pursuit of a Muslim lover. In the choice between supporting the young lovers and the young woman’s Hindu father, old Akbar’s sympathies are entirely with the father. Tolerance and equality at one level are combined with intolerance and inequality at another level, but the extent of general tolerance on matters of belief and practice is quite remarkable. It may not be irrelevant to note in this context, especially in the light of the hard sell of “Western liberalism,” that while Akbar was making these pronouncements, the Inquisitions were in full bloom in Europe.

Because of the experience of contemporary political battles, especially in the Middle East, Islamic civilization is often portrayed as being fundamentally intolerant and hostile to individual freedom. But the presence of diversity and variety
within
a tradition applies very much to Islam as well. In India, Akbar and most of the other Moghuls provide good examples of both theory and practice of political and religious tolerance. Similar examples can be found in other parts of the Islamic culture. The Turkish emperors were often more tolerant than their European contemporaries. Abundant examples of this can be found also in Cairo and Baghdad. Indeed, even the great Jewish scholar Maimonides, in the twelfth century, had to run away from an intolerant Europe (where he was born) and from its persecution of Jews, to the security of a tolerant and urbane Cairo and the patronage of Sultan Saladin.

Similarly, Alberuni, the Iranian mathematician, who wrote the first general book on India in the early eleventh century (aside from translating Indian mathematical treatises into Arabic), was among the earliest of anthropological theorists in the world. He noted—and protested against—the fact that “depreciation of foreigners … is common to all nations towards each other.” He devoted much of his life to fostering mutual understanding and tolerance in his eleventh-century world.

It is easy to multiply examples. The point to be seized is that the modern advocates of the authoritarian view of “Asian values” base
their reading on very arbitrary interpretations and extremely narrow selections of authors and traditions. The valuing of freedom is not confined to one culture only, and the Western traditions are not the only ones that prepare us for a freedom-based approach to social understanding.

The issue of democracy also has a close bearing on another cultural matter that has received some justified attention recently. This concerns the overwhelming power of Western culture and lifestyle in undermining traditional modes of living and social mores. For anyone concerned about the value of tradition and of indigenous cultural modes this is indeed a serious threat.

The contemporary world is dominated by the West, and even though the imperial authority of the erstwhile rulers of the world has declined, the dominance of the West remains as strong as ever—in some ways stronger than before, especially in cultural matters. The sun does not set on the empire of Coca-Cola or MTV.

The threat to native cultures in the globalizing world of today is, to a considerable extent, inescapable. The one solution that is not available is that of stopping globalization of trade and economies, since the forces of economic exchange and division of labor are hard to resist in a competitive world fueled by massive technological evolution that gives modern technology an economically competitive edge.

This is a problem, but not just a problem, since global trade and commerce can bring with it—as Adam Smith foresaw—greater economic prosperity for each nation. But there can be losers as well as gainers, even if in the net the aggregate figures move up rather than down. In the context of economic disparities, the appropriate response has to include concerted efforts to make the form of globalization less destructive of employment and traditional livelihood, and to achieve gradual transition. For smoothing the process of transition, there also have to be opportunities for retraining and acquiring of new skills (for people who would otherwise be displaced), in addition to providing social safety nets (in the form of social security
and other supportive arrangements) for those whose interests are harmed—at least in the short run—by the globalizing changes.

This class of responses will to some extent work for the cultural side as well. Skill in computer use and the harvesting of Internet and similar facilities transform not only economic possibilities, but also the lives of the people influenced by such technical change. Again, this is not necessarily regrettable. There remain, however, two problems—one shared with the world of economics and another quite different.
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First, the world of modern communication and interchange requires basic education and training. While some poor countries in the world have made excellent progress in this area (countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia are good examples of that), others (such as those in South Asia and Africa) have tended to lag behind. Equity in cultural as well as economic opportunities can be profoundly important in a globalizing world. This is a shared challenge for the economic and the cultural world.

The second issue is quite different and distances the cultural problem from the economic predicament. When an economic adjustment takes place, few tears are shed for the superseded methods of production and for the overtaken technology. There may be some nostalgia for specialized and elegant objects (such as an ancient steam engine or an old-fashioned clock), but in general old and discarded machinery is not particularly wanted. In the case of culture, however, lost traditions may be greatly missed. The demise of old ways of living can cause anguish, and a deep sense of loss. It is a little like the extinction of older species of animals. The elimination of old species in favor of “fitter” species that are “better” able to cope and multiply can be a source of regret, and the fact that the new species are “better” in the Darwinian system of comparison need not be seen as consolation enough.
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This is an issue of some seriousness, but it is up to the society to determine what, if anything, it wants to do to preserve old forms of living, perhaps even at significant economic cost. Ways of life can be preserved if the society decides to do just that, and it is a question of balancing the costs of such preservation with the value that the society attaches to the objects and the lifestyles preserved. There is, of course, no ready formula for this cost-benefit analysis, but
what is crucial for a rational assessment of such choices is the ability of the people to participate in public discussions on the subject. We come back again to the perspective of capabilities: that different sections of the society (and not just the socially privileged) should be able to be active in the decisions regarding what to preserve and what to let go. There is no compulsion to preserve every departing lifestyle even at heavy cost, but there is a real need—for social justice—for people to be able to take part in these social decisions, if they so choose.
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This gives further reason for attaching importance to such elementary capabilities as reading and writing (through basic education), being well informed and well briefed (through free media), and having realistic chances of participating freely (through elections, referendums and the general use of civil rights). Human rights in the broadest sense are involved in this exercise as well.

On top of these basic recognitions, it is also necessary to note the fact that cross-cultural communication and appreciation need not necessarily be matters of shame and disgrace. We do have the capacity to enjoy things that have originated elsewhere, and cultural nationalism or chauvinism can be seriously debilitating as an approach to living. Rabindranath Tagore, the great Bengali poet, commented on this issue rather eloquently:

While there is some danger in ignoring uniqueness of cultures, there is also the possibility of being deceived by the presumption of ubiquitous insularity.

It is indeed possible to argue that there are more interrelations and more cross-cultural influences in the world than is typically
acknowledged by those alarmed by the prospect of cultural subversion.
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The culturally fearful often take a very fragile view of each culture and tend to underestimate our ability to learn from elsewhere without being overwhelmed by that experience. Indeed, the rhetoric of “national tradition” can help to hide the history of outside influences on the different traditions. For example, chili may be a central part of Indian cooking as we understand it (some even see it as something of a “signature tune” of Indian cooking), but it is also a fact that chili was unknown in India until the Portuguese brought it there only a few centuries ago. (Ancient Indian culinary art used pepper, but no chili.) Today’s Indian curries are no less “Indian” for this reason.

Nor is there anything particularly shady in the fact that—given the blustering popularity of Indian food in contemporary Britain—the British Tourist Board describes curry as authentic “British fare.” A couple of summers ago I even encountered in London a marvelous description of a person’s incurable “Englishness”: she was, we were informed, “as English as daffodils or chicken tikka masala.”

The image of regional self-sufficiency in cultural matters is deeply misleading, and the value of keeping traditions pure and unpolluted is hard to sustain. Sometimes the intellectual influences from abroad may be more roundabout and many-sided. For example, some chauvinists in India have complained about the use of “Western” terminology in school curriculum, for example in modern mathematics. But the interrelations in the world of mathematics make it hard to know what is “Western” and what is not. To illustrate, consider the term “sine” used in trigonometry, which came to India straight through the British, and yet in its genesis there is a remarkable Indian component. Aryabhata, the great Indian mathematician of the fifth century, had discussed the concept of “sine” in his work, and had called it, in Sanskrit,
jya-ardha
(“half-chord”). From there the term moved on in an interesting migratory way, as Howard Eves describes: