E-Book - Mahatma Gandhi

Gandhi and the Encounter …. 13civilisational encounters would reveal that what really added tothe development of human individuals as persons and asmembers of collectivities and directed the course of theirevolution as a species towards the realisation of cultural goalswere the creative and peaceful encounters of civilisationsthrough which they learned from one another and enriched eachtradition. It must be in the light of this indisputable historicalexperience that we explore and examine the underlying causesof the predicted violent clash between civilisations.It could be seen that every great civilisation haddeveloped its own paradigm i.e., philosophy and method ofapproach to civilisational encounters.The Western Paradigm – Eurocentrism: Dominate, Devourand DestroyThe Western paradigm was, and unfortunately eventoday is, that of Eurocentrism. The West (western civilisation)understood itself to be the most evolved civilisation of theworld and looked upon the rest i.e., non-western peoples as notonly not civilized but as mere or near savages. So, during thefirst colonial era following European enlightenment, the Westjustified their colonial project by using the rhetoric of‘civilising’. The most illustrative example is what the Britishclaimed to do in India (and, of course, in all their colonieselsewhere). They tried to propagate the view that India was notcivilised and what Britain was trying to do was to civilise it.One may recall two such racist tracts, the English drama criticWilliam Archer’s Is India Civilised ? and the American authorKatherine Mayo’s Mother India which would attest to this. 6It took serious and concerted scholarly effort spreadingover a really long span of time to demolish this myth. Gandhiwas certainly one of the first and foremost to expose and fightthis hideous civilizing project of the West and in his first book