I propose as my first this paper that any effort to understand Asian culture, and the impact of globalization on it, must begin with the question of awareness. The concept of Asia is partly a gift of Europe.
Now you may consider that gift a poisoned one. But it is a gift of Europe, nonetheless. Five hundred years ago, in 1498, Vasco da Gama came to the west coast of India. And Europe celebrated it as the discovery of Asia. We were discovered.
I've been studying the city where they arrived. It's a fascinating city. But that discovery of the Orient or Asia by Vasco da Gama, and the consequence of it we are still living with. Because whether de Gama himself initiated the process or not that discovery subsequently marked the initiation of the age of colonialism for millions. And Asia began its contemporary journey into modernity partly in response to colonialism. I would propose as a possible adjunct to your definition of Asia as a shared territory, that of Asia as a cultural area where 500 years ago the process was initiated, which could be identified as cultural fear of self, combined with cultural self hatred. Fear of self because a vast number of Asians for the first time began to fear what would happen to them as a consequence of European dominance. This affected even countries that were not colonized. I am given to understand by Japanese scholars that though Japan was never directly colonized, if you read Japanese documents of the earlier period, you will find that Japan lived with the awareness that two large civilization areas, China and India, had already been dominated by the West. Japan was anxious and fearful of what might happen to it. And Japanese modernization was partly a response to that fear.
I do not know how far this is true or false. It is for you to tell me that. But I propose that this fear of self, fear of what we are, began early enough. That gradually turned into the form of self-hatred, in which we want to exorcise part of ourselves that will resist or do not serve the purposes of modernization.
At this point, I should clarify that I do not distinguish between modernization and Westernization. Exactly as some people think that small pox is a more acute form of chicken pox. At some level, both the presentations you have heard recognize this, because the changes Professor Reid has identified arc the creation of an affluent, urbanized, floating population which may or may not be called the "Middle Class".
Attracting people from traditional technical occupations about one-third of people are living in cities in Southeast Asia which is trying to duplicate the experience of Europe in the inter-war years, believing that they are not being Western, but only modern. Predictably the other countries in Asian have chosen for themselves the same model.
Tragically, while this might have yielded many benefits, it has also faithfully represents the violent history of this century. During the last one hundred years, man-made violence has killed at least 170 million people in the name of modern ideologies, not traditional religious faiths, as in the past. These homicidal ideologies are direct products of if you like, Western modernization. The victims of Nazism went to their graves, or to the chimneys, hearing the praises of the 19th century biology and eugenics; the victims of Stalin went to the gulag, and to their death while listening to the praises of scientific history. The internationalism Professor Reid is speaking about also has a component which we would hove to believe is universal, but it is actually a direct product of if not the Enlightenment values, certainly of 19th century imperial Europe. And l9th century Europe might have, in some ways, provided a very rewarding model of modernization and development, but it has been, for many of us, a poisoned gift. That model has not grown out of a healthy, normal, autonomous Asia but from the experiences of a geographical area that had begun to hate itself and begun to retool and engineer itself to become more like imperial Europe. As a result, we are burdened today with the imperial concepts of nation-state modernity, and progress - all of which we want to deploy in our society mechanically. The real issue in how far resistance to these concepts can go and what cultural resources for such resistance have been left in societies like ours.
Some clues are available even within the societies we are dealing with. I have been researching ethnic conflicts and violence during these last few years. In the course of this work, it has always surprised me that while about one-fifth of Indians stay in cities, more than two-third of all ethnic and ethno-nationalist violence has taken place in cities. Cities also account for 96.5% of all casualties from such conflict.
Why? I suspect that a part of the answer lies in the fact that we still live in communities in the villages, whereas in the
