E-Book - Mahatma Gandhi

Gandhi and the Encounter …. 15with Huntington's ‘solitarist approach to civilisations and hisconcept of an inevitable clash along civilisational lines byarguing that people see their identities not in terms of singularcivilisational affiliation but multiple affiliations in whichcivilisation is only one factor. "In our normal lives we seeourselves as members of a variety of groups", wrote Sen. 8 PaulBerman in his book Terror and Liberalism 9 questionsHuntington’s civilisational clash hypothesis. Berman is of theview that in today’s world there are no monolithic civilisations(in other words there are no Western or Islamic civilisationsper se) and hence distinct cultural boundaries, asconceptualized by Huntington, do not really exist. In fact,Huntington failed to take note of the fact that it is possible to bemodern without getting westernised. Edward Said, the wellknownliterary theorist and public intellectual responded toHuntington’s thesis through his essay The Clash ofIgnorance 10 . According to Said the arguments of Huntingtonthat each civilisation is ‘fixed’, self enclosed and has a specialpsychology and destiny betray his ignorance of the truedynamics of civilisations. Said points out that Huntington’sattempt is an example of an ‘imagined geography’ wherecivilisations are portrayed within the clash framework asperpetual rivals in order to legitimize a certain politics.In February, 2002, a self-styled non-partisan think tank,under the auspices of the Institute for American Values, issuedan open letter entitled “What We’re Fighting for: A Letter fromAmerica”. Signed by sixty American intellectuals like PatrickMoynihan, Francis Fukuyama, Samuel Huntington, Robert D.Putman, Amitai Ezioni et.al., the letter tried to offer theAmerican justification for launching the fight against whatthey called “the terror of radical Islamicism.” In the Preambleof the letter they affirm five fundamental truths that ‘pertain toall people without distinction’, viz,