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THE ASIAN TRADITION
RUDYARD Kipling's facile generalisation about the East and West with its catchy rhythm and its half-truth has vitiated much of current thinking on Asia and its role. The time has come when the truth it contains might be separated from the falsehood, and the way prepared for a better appreciation of Asian history.
It is an obvious truism to say that "East is East." but it is a dangerous and false prophet who insists that the West and the East shall never meet. At the time when Kipling wrote, Europe was at the height of its powar; materially, it held empire over the rest of the globe with the exception of the American continent, America had not yet shown what it was capable of doing and Asia had not yet arisen tasset with any confidence the greatness of its past and the promise of its fature. To the average Westerner whom Kipling represenied, the West was nt only the West, it was the acme of human achievement and the East was for ever doomed to the political subjection and economic exploitation of the immensely more civilised nations of the West. Hence the Eastern people must remain what they apparently were, steeped in misery and darkness of mind and soul. The West must maintain zealously its separate existence, there could never be any question of their coming together except as eater and the eaten. The presence of Turkey 07 Europe n soil was an anomaly that must be ended, the " Sick Man of Europe" should be killed and his careass divided up among the Teuton and the Slav. The Berber in Algeria should be driven into the desert and the white colons rule supreme. In Syria. Lebonen and Feypt. the nat ves should be tight to ad pt the Western dress and languages French. Americ.n ind English-Isthey should contamin' te the cultured nations on their passage to the distant East. In lian, in the Levant and the vast spaces of China, the grert European Powers had their "spheres of influence ", primrily no doubt to “develop" the areas but ultimately to civilise the natives by means of such agencies as the Christian missionary and the Sunday school. In cuntries like India Indo-China. Java and Central Asia where the civ I sers were also plitical sovereigns, and the ultimate goal was, at least in the inital stages of the c.v lising mission. to pass on to the benighted dwelles of the cont seats of eviten nat only
-Sanat Banerji the Christian gospel of the one true God this was nothing new, for the Muslim invaders had done the same thing some centuries age--but also the benefits cf their recently acquired culture, their language and literature and philosophy and science, so that ultimately there should prevail, in place of the bewildering diversity of creed and cultural patterns, a single language and the one accept ble form of thought and social living which the European colonisers had inherited from the days of the Italian Renaissance.
But fairly early in their victorious career most of the European Nations discovered that the East was inclined to remain obstinately Oriental. attached to its religious forms, its social codes and habits of thought. S. me like the upper classes in India and Java and West Asia accepted the languages of the West as their media of expression. A small minority in China and even in independent Japan had become Christians. There arose even in backward Iran and Turkey a demand for some form of democracy. But in practically every other sphere of life, the East refused to change. The instance of Japan is not evidence to the contrary; for as we shall try to show later, the so-called "renaissance" of Japan and its frantic attempt at quick change were superficial movements designed more to hoodwink the European Powers into believing that Japan now deserved to be treated as their cquals and had a right to denounce the unequal treaty rights imposed on her at a time of weakness, than to make any considerable change in the rational character and attitudes. Long before the West decided to retreat politic.lly from their vantage points in the Est.--this did not come with any real earnesiness till her the Second World War when the vcterious march of Japan all over the Far El, the growing insolvency of the once great Pwers as a result of the War ef rt, and above all the pressing demands of the you'g American democracy made this retreat inevitable--long before this retreat most of the Western occupants of the East had resigned themselves to the reality that the peoples of Asia and North Africa which is a cultural annexe of Asia were stubbornly opposed to serious change and that they had best be left to themselves as long as they provided the needed markets for the West's industrial and commercial veatures. Kipling's wellknown verse reflects this attitude f the disillusioned West.
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