It is not particularly surprising that the debate on the proposed new world information order touched off by the recent NAMEDIA conference should by and large run along the familiar cold war lines. For, despite the country’s policy of non-alignment, many of us have bought categories of thought which serve as instruments in the ideological competition between the two superpowers. This is a sad testimony to our failure to work out an intellectual framework which can provide an underpinning for the policy of non-alignment.
Behind this failure lies another – the failure to recognise that even in this rapidly shrinking world, India is and must seek to remain a world unto itself, though, of course, not cut off from the rest of humanity which, in any case, is not possible in this age for such a large country. India is not another Burma or Albania. Thus while we interact with other nations, we must retain, develop and assert our autonomy in every field of activity. This has in fact been happening but in a confused way because the necessary intellectual clarity to guide the effort has been lacking.
In theory, this is what non-alignment is all about. In reality, at the heart of the policy as it has been formulated and propagated lies the confusing proposition that India should see itself essentially as part of the Asian and Afro-Asian groupings and the third world by virtue of its having been a Western (British) colony and by virtue of its being a developing, that is being a poor and predominantly agricultural, country.
Complex Realities
There are many sources of this confusion – groping towards one world, the Marxist-Leninist formulation that capitalism-imperialism is a world phenomenon and the struggle against it has, therefore, to be worldwide, the belief that there is an Asian or even an Afro-Asian personality which is very different from the Western personality and so on. All these propositions are vulgar simplifications of complex realities and it is truly extraordinary that they should command almost universal acceptance.
For us the more pertinent point, however, is that this self-denigration is not peculiar to us. Two other great Asian civilizations – China and Egypt – have taken a similarly erroneous view of their positions with even worse consequences. Communist China first saw itself as part of the world communist movement with its headquarters in Moscow and then sought to shift those headquarters to its own capital, Peking. Disenchantment with Moscow and failure of their own effort to seize leadership have settled the issue for the Chinese. They have been compelled to be themselves. And so have been the Egyptians by their inability to wage a successful war against Israel and their reluctance to go on with a policy which has spelt disaster for them.
Since China has finally opted out of the communist movement, commentators all over the world have rushed to the conclusion that Beijing is now waiting for an opportunity to try and seize the leadership of the third world. Apparently they assume that the Chinese have not learnt anything from their bitter experience of membership of the Soviet bloc and the communist movement. That is unlikely.
There has been a similar and equally widespread speculation regarding Egypt. It would, of course, want to improve ties with other Arab countries. But the separate peace that it has concluded and maintained with Israel is not just the handiwork of a remarkably bold leader. It represents a broad national consensus which in turn is an expression of something even more fundamental and deeper – the yearning of an old civilization to be left alone to solve its problems.
This reality is blurred in the case of Egypt by a variety of factors. Its old civilization has been superseded by Islam; Egyptian Muslims too see themselves as part of the larger Arab-Islamic fraternity; and instead of asserting its autonomy in the new context of peace with Israel, Cairo has drawn close to the United States in order to be able to get the kind of military and economic assistance it thinks it needs. Even so today’s Egypt is very different from Nasser’s Egypt. Its destiny is not linked intimately with other Arab countries and the fortunes of the Arab struggle against Israel. In any event, there are no such factors to confuse India’s and China’s deepest strivings for self-awareness-development- assertion.
No Monolithic Entities
Here we are face to face with another problem. India in the past has interacted differently with the rest of the world from China and the difference is bound to persist, though, of course, in a different form. China, unlike India, escaped both Muslim rule and direct Western rule. Islam only nibbled at its frontiers and won relatively a small number of converts. Western nations secured extra-territorial rights in its ports and maritime provinces but did not impose on it an institutional framework of their design and making.
India’s very different experience does not make it part of either the Islamic or the Western world. But this does mean that we Indians cannot be interested in raising the kind of barriers which the Chinese are inclined to do and are able to do partly on the strength of their communist system and partly on that of their language. Again, language is a major source of difference in the Indian and the Chinese response to the outside world. While the Indian elite by and large operates through English which has become the most important language of international discourse, the Chinese have not even developed an alphabet for their language.
All this apart, there is even a bigger source of intellectual confusion. This source is the use, without qualification, of generalizations such as the Arab or the Islamic or the communist world, as if they were monolithic entities of more or less uniform level of development. Clearly nothing like that exists on the ground. The two great alliance systems headed by the US and the USSR are, of course, a fact of life. But neither the US nor the USSR is presiding over a civilization area.
In the case of NATO, if it is pertinent to speak of a Western civilization based on the Judaic-Christian and Graeco-Roman heritage, it is also relevant to recall that it includes within it the oldest nation-states with long histories of rivalries and bloody conflicts.
The two world wars originated within what is now NATO. And even if Britain, France and Germany have come together in NATO and EEC because none of them is strong enough to confront the Soviet empire, how relevant is it to talk of a common heritage, especially for those who call themselves Marxist-Leninist? After all, divisions among capitalist countries is a core Leninist concept.
Two inferences follow. First, if it is intellectual laziness to invoke generalized categories such as the first, second and third world, it makes no sense at all to raise the question whether or not India belongs anywhere – Afro-Asia or the third world. Secondly, while even the once proud imperialist powers may be forced to come together either in search of security, or a large enough market, or both, as in the case of the West European members of the EEC, India has and can have no such compulsions.
A country of over 700 million people is as large a market as anyone can wish for and it can meet such dangers as it has faced or is likely to face either on its own or with the help of arrangements it can make with other powers such as the one with the Soviet Union in 1971. The same is true of China.
It follows that India enjoys a large degree of freedom in defining the terms on which it will deal with others. This fact has often been emphasized in the discussions of the country’s relations with the two superpowers. Indeed, it has served as the basis of the definition of the policy of non-alignment. But the fact of freedom and the concept resulting from it apply to other so-called third world countries as well. Our relations with them have also to be functional.
Asserting: Autonomy
On the face of it, this proposition undermines the concept of the third world waging a struggle against the West to achieve a new world order of which the proposed new economic and information orders must be essential parts. It does nothing of the kind. It only asserts India autonomy, its right to join the struggle and yet not adopt attitudes which are alien to its spirit and injurious to its interests. In the economic sphere it means that we can press for transfer of resources from the north to the south without buying the anti-Western rhetoric. And in the field of information and communication it means that we can support the demand for a more balanced flow of information without endorsing the right of third world governments to suppress freedom at home.
The suppression is a reality in many countries and there is precious little we can do to end it. But it is open to us not to endorse it – not because we are entitled to sit in judgment on others, but because it can lend legitimacy to moves to control the press in our own country.
NAMEDIA sought to achieve a balance between the needs of the Indian media and the radical rhetoric of the unfree. The result is not wholly satisfactory. More important, there are not many countries in the third world where such an exercise can be repeated. But we have to contend with problems. We cannot pretend that they do not exist.
The Times of India, 21 December 1983