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In this article @RajivMessage analyses the Western mindset that projects a universalism neglecting claims of other civilizations and peoples to their own. The article gives a peek into what one can expect to discover in his defining book Being Different. rajivmalhotra.com/library/articl…
One of the most important objectives of my recent book,Being Different, An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism (HarperCollins, 2011) is to refute Western claims of universalism.
Of course, universalism cannot be Western, Chinese, French or any other. That wouldn’t really be universal but only a particular culture’s perception and lived experience of the world.
This mindset neglects the unique trajectories and lessons learnt by other civilizations which in turn have been affected by their own geographies, histories (in many cases dating far beyond Western history), religious and spiritual traditions.
Ensconced thus in the drivers seat, with its undeniably ethnocentric blueprint of what the world should look like, the Western collective ego has embarked on scores of missions – religious and secular (colonization), to bring about this Westernization.
There are many reasons, beyond the scope of this blog but discussed at length in my book, for the grand claims made by the West to justify its pre-eminent place in the world.
Both Hebraism (the Judeo-Christian heritage) and Hellenism (the Greek heritage), with their emphasis on duality and binary values, have contributed greatly to Western identity and supremacy.
The search to define, fortify and aggrandize identities and legacies was also a result of the conflict and competition among rival European tribes and ethnicities.
On such racist and ethnocentric views has been based a good deal of Western identity, leading to later justifications of colonization and conversions.
In Being Different, I challenge this Western penchant of universalizing its own norms.
I’ve explicated some key differences between the West and Indian civilization, and I offer that these differences, once acknowledged rather than obliterated, could bring new paradigms for solving the pressing issues of our time.
