The Reality of the Global Village
The origins
When an Indian, with British citizenship and permanent residence in the USA, Pico Iyer, published an article titled “The Global Village Finally Arrives” in the Time magazine of 02 December, 1993, he invented an expression that has gained common currency and widespread endorsement[1]. He emphasized that American living styles have affected the rest of the world as much as the rest of the world has influenced America. Many food habits, dress habits, sports, mass media, products used, etc., are commonly seen throughout the world and mass communication technology is accelerating the trend towards uniformity of life-styles. Mostly, this accelerating multi-cultural trend is for the good but he also perceptively notes in passing that it also leads to rivalries and conflicts. But the Global Village is much more than even the author imagined. The Global Village is in reality a macrocosm of the traditional Indian Village that has somehow survived for several thousand years with the core structure essentially unchanged.
When the Spanish and Portuguese embarked on long voyages to discover the Americas, Sub-Saharan Africa and South and East Asia, the world would change forever. Pope Alexander VI[2] sanctified and blessed these adventures by his Papal Bull Inter Caetera of 04 May, 1493, allocating newly discovered lands west of Cape Verde Islands to Spain and east of it to Portugal. The wealth acquired by these two countries roused the envy of the rest of Western Europe and later Britain, France, Italy, Germany and even little Holland and Belgium joined the race for the acquisition of new lands: to conquer, subjugate their people and to extract their wealth.
Everywhere that Europeans landed, they were initially received with kindness and hospitality. This kindness was regarded as stupidity and soon Europeans had occupied most of the rest of the world either by conquest or guile. The initial capital generated by the dispossession of the natives in South America helped in part to fuel the Commercial and Industrial Revolutions that created Europe’s enormous economic, technological and military advantage over non-Europeans.
The Global Village is born
Thus was born a new power structure and the Europeans’ sense of superiority over other people of the world that prevail in different forms even today. This is the true birthing period of the Global Village. The social structure that evolved is typical of an Indian village, where power is held in the hands of the Brahmins and the wealthy landowners, while the mass of the other villagers are considered a lower caste who have to be treated as inferiors and do most of the labour in the village. The parallel goes deeper. The European colonialists in Asia, Africa and South America usually had a strict ban on inter-marriage with natives for fear their race would be contaminated. It was acceptable to have native mistresses and but it was never right to marry them. And a European woman should never be tainted by association with natives. These are the dictates of the caste system in an Indian village that accepts that the superiority of the upper castes and untouchability has been decreed by God[3]. Indians designed such a caste system about four millennia ago.
But we must concede that direct colonial rule disappeared in the latter part of the 20th C. and former European colonies are almost all independent, except those like Australia, New Zealand and the Americas where European settler colonies erased the natives and created new European lands. We now have the United Nations General Assembly, where all of 192 nations of the world are represented. The same is true of any Indian village which has the panchayat or village council where all households are members. But no one is fooled: major decisions at the panchayat are influenced by the rich Brahmins and landowners, who have the real power, not the peasants who are beholden to them or work for them. And the upper castes are very conservative and have little desire to change the status quo.
This is the accepted manner in which big international decision-making bodies like the UN, the World Bank, the IMF and other influential international agencies that decide on international matters in the name of international community really works[4]. The UN General Assembly has 192 member states but the talk here carries little weight on any important issue. Every member state knows that. The resolutions passed at the General Assembly are routinely bypassed (eg. Palestine, Kashmir, Cuba, etc.) by the Security Council which has the power to implement. The real decision-making power lies with the 5 permanent members of the Security Council with their veto rights and with the Club of G7 nations acting together to promote their own interests and agendas.
But what about international institutions that act as checks and balances: the International Courts of Justice, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN Human Rights Council and other controlling bodies. Well their counterparts also exist in the village: the police offices and other state agencies committed to the welfare of people. But who would believe that a Dalit could bring a charge of rape against a Brahmin or a Kshatriya, while a Dalit accused of rape or marriage to an upper caste person would be lynched while the police stood by. It is common good practice among UN agencies to focus their attention on the real or perceived misdemeanours of developing countries and ignore international violations and crimes by the superiors. If any other lower state had the temerity to challenge the system, they have NATO, the world’s most powerful military alliance, to put such a challenger in place.
Tradition will be enforced
The G7 includes Japan, a non-European nation, but the Japanese were designated “Honorary Whites” even by the former apartheid regime in South Africa. China is among the five permanent members of the Security Council by an accident of history. Since the Council was formed by the victors of World War 2, China had to be cultivated to gain its full support against the war with Japan. When the Chinese communists took power in 1949 China was thrown out of the UN and only re-entered it in 1974 due to the rapprochement by the Nixon-Kissinger team that visited Mao Zedong, mainly as a counter-weight to the Soviet Union.
Though China is a member of the Security Council, it is not in the inner circle that dominates it. The country itself is surrounded by NATO military bases and subject to incessant hostile media attacks that alert others that this non-European Asian country is becoming too rich too fast and may hurt the ruling power structure.
Pico Iyer and his admirers happily note that people all over the world now accept international cuisine and international life-styles but he forgets that there are one billion desperately poor in the world, according to the UN, living in developing countries, that have very little access to these advantages. We all know that the lower classes in Indian villages are desperately poor[5] while the landowning class is rich and have most of the mod cons. That we all accept as natural.
The Indian village has its untouchables, the lowest of the low, social pariahs who are scorned and isolated. Now the ruling caste of the world has designated their untouchables: Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Cuba. The list expands and contracts depending on how other nations are perceived: are they obedient to us as required by tradition or getting too smart for our liking? Colonel Gaddafi made his nation of Libya a pariah state but he has been partially rehabilitated. Similarly, Indian villagers at the lowest level have some degree of limited social mobility, if they have economically or professionally advanced, depending on their acceptance by the village upper castes.
Tradition must live
The great Indian leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawarharlal Nehru, who worked with Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar to outlaw caste discrimination even in the Indian Constitution, were unable to eradicate the ingrained social inequality in the traditional Indian village. Despite the current teachings that Globalization is creating equality among nations[6], this is only a shallow portrait and not the reality. Tradition is hard to alter
The conservatism of the upper caste both in the Global Village and the Indian Village remains the same. The caste system is rigid and even in a modern India remains strong. The Permanent Five of the Security Council were self-appointed leaders in 1944 but they never allowed change though the situation in 2010 is drastically different. Germany is the biggest economy in Europe but it is out of the Security Council while smaller fry like UK and France hold their place. Japan is even bigger, now running as the third largest economy after the USA and China, but it is still not among the select five who will not give up their old privileges. The powerful G7 group, despite issues of hierarchy, stick together as it would be unwise for them to rock the establishment where they have a common interest..
What a wonderful thing it is that an ancient Indian tradition is now accepted as universal law! However, there is a dark shadow in the sky. Indian Buddhist philosophy proclaimed: The only permanent feature of the universe is change. The Indian Village is very slowly but surely breaking down with the lower castes taking to education, business and politics. Economics is a great leveller. Even in India, Mayawati, a Dalit, became Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh State, India’s most populous state. And so it is in the Global Village. As China, India, Brazil and other developing countries become economically more and more powerful, the old traditions must unfortunately decline and disappear to create another world.
Kenneth Abeywickrama
27 November 2010
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