We read with some alarm that China will soon enough overtake
the US in industrial production and that India is not so far behind and
possesses particular strengths in engineering and computing software. We have
long known how formidable Japan is as a manufacturing power, not to mention
quite recently as a military power, if we dare drag up again that little contretemps at Pearl Harbor in 1941. Their
vast, pullulating populations give China and India a labour cost edge over the
West at least for the present and 50 years hence, long after my time, thank
goodness, the Asiatics may well in due course dominate the world, if they play
their cards right, although that is far from a foregone conclusion. It is usually
a good policy to know your potential Masters.
The British have had a special interest in and affection for
India, understandably not much reciprocated; after all, the British effectively
ruled the place via the East India Company from 1757, then officially through
the British Crown from The Mutiny in 1858 to 1947. India was truly “The Jewel
of the Empire” providing rich careers and extraordinary experiences for
privileged generations of educated Britons.
The most obvious Indian influence on Britain is gastronomic.
Almost every British town will have an Indian restaurant, often popular and
inexpensive, purveying curries, baltis
and biryanis of chicken, prawn and
lamb firmly adapted to British tastes, much appreciated by young men after
sinking the regulation 6 pints of beer. Chicken
tikka masala, hardly known in India itself, has become a signature British
dish and national institution. Curry, chutney, kedgeree and tiffin recall the
days of British India when memsahibs
patronised the natives, longing for Cheltenham Spa, as they relaxed in the
hill-stations at Simla or Darjeeling.
 |
| Chicken Tikka Masala, a British favourite |
I say “British India” advisedly and maybe it should now be
referred to as “The Sub-continent” as it embraces modern India, Pakistan and
Bangladesh. In fact some 70% of “Indian” restaurants in Britain are owned by
Bangladeshis, mainly from the modest city and area of Silhet, where fancy
cooking is not a local art. There are now many up-market Indian establishments
– famed Veeraswamy with its South
Indian food opened off Regent Street in 1928 – but most are none too ambitious
and date from the post-WW2 immigrant influx period.
Politics in the Sub-Continent is a mixed bag. India by some
measures is the “greatest Democracy in the World” and certainly the transfer of
power between parties after elections has usually gone smoothly. Vote-rigging
and corruption are endemic however and the assassination of 3 Gandhi leaders,
Mahatma, no relation Indira and Rajiv is none too comforting. Pakistan is
mainly a military dictatorship, though fitfully democratic, with 2 Bhuttos and
unlamented General Zia ul-Huq leaving the stage violently. Mind you, what about
JFK and Martin Luther King?
In social terms, the caste system, forced marriage and
summary village justice are repellent to the West (ignoring relatively recent
Western colour prejudice and lynchings) but India is moving on. There is a
productive middle class, Bollywood amuses and baffles us; with Tata now owning
Jaguar, British admiration for its new models breaks through previously
unthinkable mental barriers. India has arrived!
China has never departed and its prosperous days of the 14th
century Ming dynasty onwards slowly declined as Western technology and trade
muscled in. By the 19th century China was burdened by unequal
treaties with colonial powers waging the likes of the shameful Opium Wars and
despite becoming a Republic it was slow to modernise, unlike the Japanese. The
accession of Mao Zedung brought unity but a feeble economy, miraculously
transformed from 1978 under Deng Xiaoping to a global powerhouse. Can they keep
it up?
Mao’s wasteful dictatorship brought mass murder of
opponents, deadly famine and harsh oppression. Earlier the Japanese had shown
their cruelty by their slaughter in 1937 Nanking. Yet Europe easily holds the
palm in the mass murder stakes: the horrors of half-European Stalin’s years of
purges and famine-creation in Soviet Russia were only surpassed by the
horrendous ideological extermination of European Jewry at the hands of Nazi
Germany, as European as Apfelstrudel.
The influence of the Chinese on British life is more
elusive. Chinese food is widely enjoyed, almost as much as Indian and some
Chinese establishments are of high quality joining Thai, Vietnamese and
Indonesian restaurants enriching many a city. But influence is measured in more
than chapattis and chow mien.
What matters is influence on how people think. I see no
evidence that Indian religion or Chinese philosophy have made inroads in the
West, other than with the crackpot devotees of Zen Buddhism or Maharishi Yogi’s
Transcendental Meditation. China’s or India’s spiritual heart is a closed book
to the West. Neither have their literature, music or art, other than on the
modish far margins, penetrated the Western consciousness. Their only merit from
a Western point of view is that they are at least not Islamic, sworn enemy of
all Western cultural values and indeed of Eastern values too, judging by the
Taliban’s destruction of the ancient Buddhas
of Bamiyan in 2001.
The prediction of Chinese and Indian economic dominance may
well one day come true but let’s call to mind Kipling’s deeper wisdom;
Oh,
East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.
The West will continue to bring light to mankind in its own complex and life-enhancing way!
SMD
4.03.14
Text Copyright ©
Sidney Donald 2014
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