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The New Clash of Civilizations: How the Contest between America, China, India
The book is divided into six sections, History, Nation, World, Leaders, Science & Society and Vintage, each of which contains separate articles and pieces on the section theme. The basic premise is clear: The West is in decline, China and India are on the rise and Islam will have to order it's own house. The premise is not over-analysed, and basically two sections deal directly with the overall theme - History and World, a combined 34 pages only. The rest is devoted to India’s past, present and future, its governance, or lack there of, and the myriad other facets of our nation. The book is light reading and lays out very clearly what it wants to say. The History and World sections are fascinating in their surgical debunking of the myth of Western superiority. Merchant doesn’t mince words and attributes the rise of the West, and of white racism, to the rapacity of colonisation and the slave trade. In 1700, the population of India was 165 million and it was the world's largest economy. Along with China, it produced over 50 per cent of the global economic output. The author then goes on to say, "And Britain? It had a population of 8.6 million and produced a mere 3 per cent of the world's output"! "Colonisation and the Industrial Revolution changed the world dramatically over the next 150 years. By 1870, the average Briton was six times richer than the average Indian or Chinese." The book makes for poignant reading in places. The article on the slave trade, "Britain's Apology to Africa", is shocking and revelatory in parts. "One of the great hidden secrets of British colonialism is the slave trade. It was a 250-year-long trade that disgraced Britain and brutalised an entire continent...One of the pioneers of the largely British-run African slave trade (55 per cent of slavers were British) was Sir John Hawkins..." The brutality of capturing human beings and taking them to the plantations of the West Indies and America has been glossed over by British historians, but it was this very slave labour that provided the manpower for the rise of the West. (This, and the turning of colonies into captive markets whose own nascent industries were then systematically extinguished). And as we know in India and China now, manpower has its benefits! The author relates a very telling fact, elsewhere, in this context. It was really after World War I and the loss of millions of Britain's fit men on the battlefields of France, that British decline started. It was impossible to make up for such colossal losses. In a different section, Britain's wartime PM Winston Churchill takes such a beating, that it has to be read to be believed! Most of the book deals with our own nation’s problems. Some of the article titles are self explanatory: "Building an $85 Trillion economy", "The Blight of Misgovernance", "How the Black Economy Subverts India's Politics", "Secularism: Myth and Reality and Justice for Kashmir's Pandits". The author’s analyses of the "communal" problem is very nuanced and offers optimistic solutions. But all is not seriousness. Merchant talks of esoteric topics like the origin of the universe the decline of Indian hockey and Sachin's place in history. The Vintage section takes a good look back, not only at events, but at attitudes. In an 1985 article he writes, quoting Auberon Waugh, "It was my observation fifteen years ago that all the brightest and the best went into journalism, and the second best into diplomatic service and academic life. What went into industry was pretty good rubbish, just a whisker ahead of the absolute rubbish which went into politics." How times have changed!
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Publisher
and journalist Minhaz Merchant's The New Clash of Civilizations echoes
Samuel Huntington's controversial 1996 work, but only in its
title. As Merchant makes clear at the outset, this is a personal
amalgam of his previous journalistic work and fresh material is woven
together to convey his basic theme. It is less about the constant
thundering clashes that Huntington had us hear throughout his thesis,
and more about India's upcoming role in a new world order.