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by IFTEKHAR SAYEED
“Freedom is a western word.”
Thus Michael Caine as Thomas Fowler in the remake of the
film The Quiet American.
Based in Vietnam, the 1955 novel by Graham Greene explores
the consequences of trying to impose alien views on other
cultures. A bizarre conversation on political philosophy takes place
in a tower amidst paddy fields, manned by two colonial,
Vietnamese soldiers.
“I said to Pyle, “Do you think they know they are fighting for
Democracy?”’
‘“And as for liberty, I don’t know what it means. Ask them.” I
called across the floor in French to them. “La liberte – qu’est ce
que c’est la liberte?” They sucked in the rice and stared back and
said nothing.’”
And yet the Viet Minh were fighting for freedom. Therefore,
freedom does have meaning in Asia – but not democracy. The
Vietnam War was, as one historian put it, a war “fought to achieve
a united, independent country”. Freedom in Asia and Africa, thanks
to colonial experience, means collective freedom, not individual
freedom.
Further proof comes from the fact that Asia never experienced
slavery. The very meaning of freedom derived from its antithesis –
slavery. Egypt had no concept of slavery and ‘slaves’ never
appeared until the Egyptian Empire – and constituted a minuscule
part of the labour force; household slaves were easily assimilated.
In China, slaves comprised only 1% of the population and had a
different status from that of Roman slaves! The corresponding
ratio for Attica around 431 BC was between 25-33%. However, in
Greece, too, Hellenistic despotism entailed the disappearance of
slavery – and its re-emergence with the Roman Republic and,
again, its disappearance with the Empire. Freedom has no
meaning unless the possibility of losing it is real.
Even slaves – the word mamluk meant a male of slave origins
– had been rulers in the Muslim world when they had had sufficient
military power to do so. Qutb-ud-Din Aybak had been a slave
ruler; the Delhi Dynasty had been a dynasty of slaves. How
different from Greek and Roman Republican slavery, where a
slave was regarded as hardly human. (Incredibly enough,
Diodotus, a royal slave in the Seleucid household, seized power in
the kingdom of Syria and was accepted – albeit temporarily –as a
ruler! The episode highlights the level of tolerance under Hellenistic
absolutism.)
There appears then a genuine relationship between absolutism
and the absence of slavery. Since Asia has always been
absolutist, no private loyalties were ever allowed to emerge. When
we look around Asia today, and observe the dynastic and one-
party rules that prevail, we are reminded of the absolutism that is
part of our historical legacy. Republics and democracies have
always drawn a sharp boundary between citizen and slave. We
see the legacy at work in the treatment of Palestinians by Israel
and of Iraqis by Americans: Palestinians and Iraqis are outsiders.
Our culture, too, leaves no room for individual privacy. The
author knows a lady who wanted to emigrate from Bangladesh
because she was driven to distraction by the constant inquiries of
her friends, family, colleagues and neighbours as to whether she
was pregnant or not! Only when she had her first baby did the
incessant nagging stop. That’s our culture, and I do not judge it.
Rather sinister figures reinforce the view of collective
authoritarianism in Asia – that here the family, not the individual,
remains supreme, with the son as head. Consider South Korea:
despite years of democratic practice, the ratio of male to female
births increased with democratic progress! “Sex-selective abortion
appears prevalent in families having only daughters” observes an
expert. In 1987, the year of democratic transition in South Korea,
the sex ratio at birth was 109; by 1992 it had soared to 114: there
were 114 male births to 100 female births. Similar statistics can be
adduced for India, Taiwan, and China. Sex-selective abortion in
Asia needs to be kept in perspective, though: the rate of abortion
per 1000 women in Asia (33) was on a par with that in Latin
America and lower than that in Europe (48) in 1995; in Eastern
Europe it was a staggering 90!
Aristotle’s observations regarding liberty are pertinent only to
the west: “One principle of liberty is for all to rule and be ruled in
turn...Another is that a man should live as he likes. This, they say,
is the mark of liberty, since, on the other hand, not to live as a man
likes is the mark of a slave.” Notice the opposition between slavery
and liberty, the private life of the individual.
‘Freedom’ outside Western Europe then does not mean
individual freedom. If so, how does one explain the spread of
democracy to Africa and Asia since the collapse of the Berlin
Wall? In 1989, there were only 3 democracies in sub-Saharan
Africa; in 1991, there were 30. Donors were quite happy to finance
military rule in Bangladesh, too, until 1990.
In their book Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument,
anthropologists Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz observe: “It
cannot simply be a coincidence, that, now that the West ties aid to
democratisation under the guise of multi-party elections, multi-
party elections are taking place in Africa”.
Similarly, The Economist notes: “...the cold war’s end
prompted western donors to stop propping up anti-communist
dictators and to start insisting on democratic reforms (December
18th 2004, p. 69)”.
Donors want democracy; they are willing to pump money and
prestige into the idea. Therefore, a ‘freedom industry’ has
developed: indeed, Chabal and Daloz devote many pages to
articulating how ‘Africa works’ – how Africans are systematically
using the resources of their donors. Take civil society and NGOs.
“The political significance of such a massive proliferation of
NGOs in Africa deserves closer attention. Our research suggests
that this expansion is less the outcome of the increasing political
weight of civil society than the consequence of the very pragmatic
realisation that resources are now largely channelled through
NGOs. It would thus be naive to think that the advent of NGOs
necessarily reflects a transition from the ponderous world of state
bureaucracy to that of more flexible ‘civic’ associations operating
beyond the clutch of the state. In our view, it is rather the reflection
of a successful adaptation to the conditions laid down by foreign
donors on the part of political actors who seek in this way to gain
access to new resources.”
They observe that “...there is today an international ‘aid market’
which Africans know how to play with great skill. Indeed, there is
very little doubt that NGOs spend an excessive proportion of their
budget on furnishing their members with sophisticated and
expensive equipment (from computers to four-wheel drives),
leaving all too little for the development projects which justify the
work of the NGOs in the first place”.
The existence of a freedom industry is further corroborated by
the findings of a British organisation, the British Helsinki Human
Rights Group. They have been described as “nosily defending a
grim lot of east European politicians against the imperialism of
western do-gooders” (The Economist, December 4th 2004, p. 52).
John Laughland, one of the trio who run the group, considers the
funding of pro-western causes in eastern Europe in the name of
supporting democracy a “scandal”. Dubious methods used by pro-
western politicians are routinely overlooked, he avers; when pro-
Russian parties use the same methods, there are screams of
protest. Mark Almond, another member, has claimed that the
internal politics of Ukraine has been influenced by money from both
George Soros and George Bush. The group dislikes both liberal
internationalism, of the European Union’s sort, as well as the more
violent Anglo-American kind.
It is not surprising that a BBC survey found that every section
of society was suspicious of NGOs. Only three percent surveyed
wanted to give them more power - and only two per cent admired
social work, the 'least admired' of all kinds of work. It has been
estimated that only 25% of donor money reach the poor in
Bangladesh. According to The Economist: “There are about
20,000 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Bangladesh,
probably more than in any other country (March 15th 2003, p. 29).”
Freedom has been reduced to cash.
Perhaps no other word in history has seen such an ignominious
reduction. Freedom is not an idea: it is a commodity. Furthermore,
instead of individual slavery, today we witness the spectacle of
collective slavery. Entire societies, states and peoples are
dominated by means of financial and military aid.
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About the Author:
Mr. Sayeed lives in Bangladesh. His website is:
http://www.geocities.com/if6065/farvardin