Dr. Alfred Scheepers
Philosopher and indologist





d.d. 02-05-2000

With interest and increasing sentiments of alarm I read the summary of the IIAS lecture by Deepak Lal in the IIAS Newsletter of february 2001 (nr. 24).

In the Post Modern tradition of the last 20 years Lal thinks he should mark »human rights«, »democracy«, »egalitarianism«, »labour and environmental standards« as the tools, forged out of the Western cosmological world system, by which the Western world tries to maintain its dominion of the world. »Thereby leaving little hope for the world's poor«.

The crookedness of the attack already immediately becomes clear when we realize what it will imply if we denounce human rights, democracy, egalitarianism, labour- and environmental standards. Having abandoned all this, on the basis of what value could we still claim »hope for the world's poor«? Why should there be any hope? Can any one in all earnest believe that capitalism without concern for human rights would improve the position of the poor? If an efficient market economy alone would be the exclusive cure of poverty, as Lal suggests, why then is it that the US counts hardly less poor than India? Besides, in appealing to hope for the world's poor, Lal cannot but appeal to the so-called »Western« values he attacks, viz. those of equality and human rights. Only this already invalidates his whole argument.

But there is more. The often heard assumption that the partisanship for human rights is typical of Western mentality, and that it is the West that tries to force these values upon the world is blatantly untrue. It was before all »the African continent« which made itself strong to get the declaration of human rights accepted in the UN (To get your brain on the right »vibration« listen for a moment to the text of Bob Marley's song »War«), and it were the Western countries, US in front, who tried to drain its full acceptance and to weaken its statements. They are still doing so. And they are helped in this endeavour by Western post-modernism, which cries for »cultural diversity« instead of universal human values. The old Latin proverb says: »divida et impera«. Not by adherence to universal values, but only by creating discord a clique can rule the world. And this is what the West did in building its empire. As long as the Western countries sent missionaries, they did not advance beyond some commercial settlements. Only when they dropped this attitude in the late 17th century, concentrated on commerce, and in the 18th century took advantage of internal Asian discords, they succeeded in establishing dominion over large parts of Asia. This is the thing Lal himself states in his lecture. In the 20th century the Dutch invited Tagore to Bali to reinforce native »Hinduism«, because it suited their dominion far better than any form of Christianity could. They learned the lesson from those few courageous Christian monks who, having observed the iniquities done to the American natives, recently subdued by the conquistadors, made great alarm, and even managed to have legal rights proclaimed for natives (however without too much effect). This points to the fact that the West already soon acknowledged that it could gain little by forcing its cosmological ideas upon the world. On the contrary, it were the conquered peoples who wondered whether the West's political and economic success was perhaps due to its cosmology and human values. We know of Gandhi's beef-eating experiment. Although it cannot be denied that the West at least contributed its part to the formation of the idea of human rights, this idea could never be the tool by which dominion of the world was to be established. The reason is obvious: the very principle of human rights is diametrically opposed to the drive to dominate others. The very assumption of the basic equality of human beings robs any form of dominion of any semblance of legal claim and justification. The idea of human rights was not a product of the imperialist ruling classes, as the idea of the free market was, but got only recognition through ages of suppression. Besides, that the idea of human rights already at an early stage was not alien to the Indian continent, appears from some Buddhist stories. There is e.g. the story of the raja who heard of a buddhist ascetic of some renown and wants to have him exhibited in his palace. He sends his servants to bring him. On arriving at the ascetic, the man reacts completely unconcerned, and only says: »It is not right that one man should rule over another«, and refuses to go to court.

The basic problem with the postmodern West-East discussion is that it seems to assume, that cultures are homogeneous, even national, entities, which they are not, for they display their internal contradictions. Not all people in a country share the same beliefs, customs, let alone, interests. I once encountered in a newspaper a letter of a reader who uttered the most extreme form of diversity nonsense I'v discovered sofar. »Why all this fuss about fibulation of African women, he argued. Why not consider it as what it is, a festive cultural practice?« One wonders how he himself would enjoy his genitals being cut of with a blunt knife and the wound sewn together with a dirty piece of rope? For a king and his retinue the sacrifice of (human) victims may have its festive element - we know the stories of Nero and Caligula - but certainly not for the victims. And this is what most diversionists forget. If we decide to accept all cultures as equal (you already get uneasy when reading this word »equal«?) instead of the human beings composing them, do you know which culture it is you accept as equal, the culture that is enforced upon a people or the culture of a people that has another's culture forced upon it? And then I do not even speak about the constraint cultures put on individuals who personally have raised themselves far beyond the narrowness of their cultural horizon? (for e.g. the 19th century Batak who related his disgust of human sacrifices to Herman van der Tuuk.) And this is important, for cultural dominion is not an exclusive Western prerogative. This means that we always must make a choice. We must choose between the culture of the oppressor or that of the oppressed, or perhaps even between the culture of the oppressor and the humanity of the oppressed, between the mutilated girl and her mutilator. We cannot embrace both, for they are incompatible. The post-modern yuppie, of course, will choose for the culture of his own colleagues. He will not even consider the condition of the poor. In this connection it is perhaps worthwhile to mention a current mistake in postmodern Nietzsche interpretation. Nietzsche is known for his fundamental attack on Christian values. But be careful: Nietzsche distinguished two types of Christians, the honest Christian, which he considered the most respectable kind of being he ever met with, and the average Christian which he typified as the »perfect hypocryte« (volkommene Mucker). The latter part of his life he struggled with the two basic archetypes of Christ and Dyonysos, without realizing (or stating?) that these two types are morphologically akin (both meek suffering winegods). In his »Geburt der Tragödie« Nietzsche e.g. mentions that in ancient Greece those artisans dedicated to Dyonysos were relieved from military service. Nietzsche did not fullheartedly embrace the »Herrenmoral«, although (like Machiavalli before him) it fascinated him. He even, unlike his later antagonist Wagner, respected animals to such a degree that he became a vegetarian. He did not search for power over others but self-mastery. He rather struggled (as a vicar's son) with a doubleness in Christianity itself. This supposed doubleness of Christianity brings us to the ambiguity of US foreign policy. It is true, that »human rights« and »democracy« are frequently used terms in American diplomacy, especially when the Democrats are in government. On the other hand we see that the US do not care a dime for these cherished notions when economic interests are in play. Think of Chile, Nicaragua and so on. So e.g., when the US criticises China for violation of human rights, their real attitude is: »of course we know your problem, but we have an electorate, you know, so if you violate human rights, please do it in such a way the world cannot see it, so that we may do business, without violating propriety (or, as it is called nowadays »political correctness«).« Of course, this is the attitude of »perfect hypocrisy« Nietzsche denounced in average Christianity. It is dominating a people and pretending to do this not for your own benefit, but in the interest precisely of those people which you rob from their rights and possessions. Then you derive your legitimacy not from yourself but from those who suffer from you. This, according to Nietzsche, is not noble (vornehm). This is what the Roman empire, and all its successors did, when they accepted Christianity, including the social worker who lives on those given to his »care«, and behaves accordingly. (Do you get Nietzsche's suspicion of Christian charity?) And, as we saw, this is, what Lal also is doing, in taking recourse to the world's poor.

In my book »An Orientation in Indian Philosophy« (also available in Dutch) I have argued, that Indian history shows at least two groups of moral values, the brahmin-feudal values of the ruling class, responsible for the well-known caste system, and the values of the salvation-movements, such as e.g. Buddhism. The values of the last tend to claim universality and are not fundamentally different from those of Christianity, Islam, Confucianism, and the majority of »modern« world religions. This alone suggests that there may be a point in this claim to universality. The values of the first, like post-modernism, emphasize the difference-principle as an expedient means to maintain power (read Bh. Gita xviii, 78 right after the celebrated verse iii, 35). It seems to me, that Lal, as a spokesman of the feudal value-group is not unhappy with the Western revaluation of the difference-principle. But we should not be fooled and identify this principle with »the Indian view of life« at large. It's only the prevailing ideology.

Marx said: Die herschende Ideologie ist die Ideologie des Herschenden. The nowadays prevailing Western ideology is the one of those who adhere to the blessings of the private property of the means of production (i.e. the state in which the owner of materials, machines and products is different from the users, respectively, producers), economic expansion and material growth; the things which Lal considers as a blessing for the whole world. Show me the country where those evil human rights activists, partisans of social equality and environmentalists are in power! I remember an article in which the then Green Indian minister of environmental matters (I believe it was Sanjay Gandhi's widow) said: »my authority is restricted to the Delhi zoo.« So, if the situation of the poor is bad in India (I certainly do not doubt this), it is the outcome of the policy of those in power and not of those not in power.

Besides, since when is environmentalism an item of Western world-dominion? Before the report of the »Club of Rome«, the environmental concern was virtually unknown in the West. Many »Greens« were directly or indirectly inspired by India (think of Anthroposophy). Think further of Gandhi's home-spun cotton, the resistance to industrialization there often has been in India, and Thumbs Up, the revolt against Coca Cola! Perhaps this has impeded India's economic growth. But don't suggest this was inspired by the Western cosmological world system. Besides, also Mr. Lal thinks »it would take us too far too substantiate this«. But facts suggest that, although India did not as good in those early years of independence as it perhaps might, still it was in the lift. Only recently, after abandoning traditional policy, the cleft between rich and poor has sharpened. So it seems rather that this is precisely the outcome of the blessed burning of natural resources for economic growth advised by Lal instead of the other way around. One should think that in a country burned by the sun in summer to a 50 degrees Celsius, the greener ways of providing energy are also the cheaper. Only one problem: no Indian merchant can claim property of the sun.

Be honest Mr. Lal: how much do you really care for those poor? Is it that thought needs at least some justification, some right, some equality, to make it look like reasoning? And that under the circumstances this could only be stolen from the poor? And moreover, that far from being a display of Western hegemony the idea of human rights therefore has its root in the structure of the human mind itself? Don't forget the equality principle was already formulated together with Confucius' golden rule.

So what may be our conclusion about Mr. Lal's lecture? The crooked reasoning of a man from a class that feels its position threatened by notions of justice, human rights, democracy, equality, rights of labour and environmental concern. To an honest person this should say enough. IIAS, I cannot but praise your excellent choice of speakers!