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Asia rising
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Kishore Mahbubani, author of The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East, says the time for the East has come
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PHOTO: MURALI KUMAR K.
New crusaders Kishore Mahbubani: ‘Western mindsets still feel that an army of Christian soldiers can invade, occupy and transform an Islamic society’
“For 2000 years, India and China were major civilisations, for the last 200 years, the situation changed – but now it is the return of Asia, and it is not easy for the West to give up their dominant power”, says Kishore Mahbubani, author of “The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East”, published by Public Affairs in New York priced at Rs. 695.
The Singapore-based Mahbubani who is dean and Professor in the Practice of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore was here to launch his book at the Bangalore International Centre in the TERI Complex.
He believes that it is important for the West to “step outside their ‘comfort zone’ before any worst-case scenarios” happen. For someone who grew up with no refrigerator, telephone, television or flush toilet in a one-bedroom house with his family of four, Mahbubani in his book, traces the different notions of ‘modernity’ to the West and East and how “Asia wants to replicate, not dominate, the West”.
After 33 years of serving as an ambassador in different countries, Mahbubani says: “With a global experience of seeing different regions and how they think of and see the world, Western minds have become more closed rather than open.” His rather optimistic book looks at the rise of Asia as de-westernisation bringing “more goodness to the world”.
“The aspirations of the Indian middle-class have grown to the Nano car and better educational opportunities, all stemming from a need to succeed”, he observes.
Citing examples of China’s population living below poverty decreasing from 600 million to 200 million, his “March to Modernisation” though positive in many aspects, seems contrived and case-based. But, this reader-friendly book is a refreshing break from the superpower feel-good business-minded accounts that are floating around.
From the rise of Asia contributing to a more peaceful and stable society, the West functioning as a single entity on global issues, the mistake of the Iraq invasion as a limited cultural context in the West, not as a malevolent intention, the writer notes that “the Western mindsets still feel that an army of Christian soldiers can invade, occupy and transform an Islamic society”. Interestingly, he feels India’s inter-communal relations with Islamic society is good.
Mahbubani is hopeful that Barack Obama will win the American Presidential campaign. “If he wins, half of anti-Americanism will disappear.” He also believes that the American universities are “No. 1 in the world in their methods of study.”
Raising issues from Pakistan producing warriors in madrassas, the rise of cell-phone use, meritocracy, corruption, babudom, Bollywood bridging the gap between Hindus and Muslims in India, to international issues of Iran, Palestine, the Middle-East, the Non-Proliferation treaty, Iraq, global warming and the European Union, Mahbubani concludes in his book that “pragmatism is the best guiding spirit”.
Signing off, he admits: “Though the rich will always be rich, we need to give the poor the vote. Asia needs to be stakeholders to ensure peace and prosperity to take charge of their own destinies”.
AYESHA MATTHAN
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