Third World Child - First World Adult

Shri Dharampal, the great Indian historian who extensively researched, the deeper motivations of British East India Company, when they were busy making the various Indian chieftians, fight amongst themselves, in an attempt to peg their own forts in Kolkata, Madras, Mumbai, used to say - "The tendency of the western nations is that they will try to eliminate those that do not live up to the standard which they define as civilisation, this is the rule and it is considered correct."
Dharampal was more interested in the thought processes, mental attitudes, and fundemental compulsions of these early European migrants from Europe to all the other parts of the world. Understanding this basis of Dharampal's thought and extensive work, is important to understanding his significance as a seminal thinker.
Dharampal unearthed and negotiated, the mental roots of colonialism, and conversely, the desire to colonize, rather than, the often well understood, at least in Marxian neo colonialism debates, individual and corporate motives like wealth accumulation, religious proselytization and need for personal adventures that characterized the initial wave of European seekers of Indian spice, - the wealth seekers, missionaries and adventurists.
The profusion of literature on the alienation, plunder and decimation of local populations, wrought by this wave of European migrants, is a matter best left for professional historians.
Recently a gentleman was amused at the negligence of non Western populations, in ever wondering, how such massive droves of European migrants, were never ever required to have legal visas to enter, plunder, acquire or govern, entire countries and continents.
I too wonder sometimes, as to what really is the essential difference between the post -Industrialization, Western world view, and the so called, essentially non Western world views.
Rudyard Kipling , of course wrote very well in The Ballad of East and West -

"Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,

Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;

But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,

When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth"

If I had to explain this to a Third World student, taking his first lessons in Western liberalism, as a political creed, and the realities of globalization of today, and that too in a few sentences, - a Third World student, whose only driving and societally reinforced ambition from childhood, has been to somehow escape poverty, and other restrictions on his individual potential, and enter the hallowed portals of European, American or Australian universities, for advancement of his own life and that of his families and countries - I would really need to use a visual metaphor.

This visual metaphor, is of course still distant, and far off. As a replacement, I think it can be eloquently expressed in two concepts or syndromes - "Us and Them" and the other syndrome being - the "Fencing and Coping" approach to the world. These first words of these two pair of words, (Us and Fencing), two world views, are quintessentially European, in fact, they define and are defined by Europeans, mutually, in various intricate forms.
On the contrary, the other two, (Them and Coping) define non Western populations and conditions.
Fencing and Coping is a more action oriented, political, direct, and policy related metaphor, while Us and Them, is more integral and fundamental, in the sense that it is difficult to see in the actions of Western thinkers and politicians, but is nevertheless fundamental in a philosophical anthropology and examination of of Western thought processes, driving motivations, that have determined the state of present day world, leaving no part of the earth untouched.

Keep watching this blog to find out what some of the contemporary non Western thinkers, who have been deeply inspired by the writings of Shri Dharampal, are thinking, in fields as diverse as history, philosophy, food policy, politics and the global agenda for change.