Nationalism and civilization are often incompatible. History is full of examples of mankind's tendency towards intraspecific aggression and genocide in the name of a tribe, a clan, a race, a state and a nation. To these we may add political ideology.

The Prophet Mohammad was not only a spiritual leader for his followers but also the founder of the first Islamic kingdom whose successors extended its hegemony from West Asia to North Africa and Spain. Later, Islam spread in South Asia and South East Asia as well. Eventually, there were many Islamic states warring among one another, either along sectarian lines or in the sheer pursuit of power. However, they continued to divide the world into Dar ul Islam, home of Islam or land of peace where the faithful live, and Dar ul Harb, home of infidels and therefore alien territory for Muslims to carry on their holy war. The Muslims view it as an ongoing conflict between Allah and His Ummah and the rest of the world consisting of infidels. 'Us' and 'Them' thus divides mankind.

This was not new. The Jews on the grounds of race and tribe, and the Christians on the basis of their allegiance to the Church, had similarly divided the world into 'us' and 'them'. The crusading spirit is founded on fragmenting humanity. All crusades and holy wars have similar bases. Even the United States continues to divide the world into 'us' and 'them', turning the free market economy and democracy into a quasi-religious ideology to justify aggression and violence against 'other people' elsewhere in the world.

The Emperor Asoka in India, after a genocidal war, became a Buddhist proponent of non-violence and peace. However, non-violence and peace could never be the one-sided world view of states divided by borders and human beings divided by gender, tribe, clan, race, religion, culture, language and social stratifications such as caste and class.

It would seem that the roots of intraspecific aggression lie in these divisions and identities based on them. After Asoka, Hindu kingdoms bounced back into being and it was Buddhism in India that had to pay the price by being exiled from the country of its origin. Buddhism itself was further splintered into sects, as happens to any ideology, secular or spiritual. Tibet, en route to China from India, developed its own Buddhist culture and philosophy, rituals and religious hierarchy.

During the last tumultuous century, we saw the rise of the world's first communist states in Russia and China respectively in the wake of the First and the Second World Wars. Great Britain, the United States of America and France had to counter Fascist nationalism and expansionism in Europe, Asia and Africa. This was another ideological conflict resulting in unprecedented casualties.

After the end of the Second World War came the era of nuclear armament and the arms race. First it was the United States of America with a virtual nuclear monopoly. But soon the Soviet Union developed its own bomb. Then came the missiles and the delivery systems that gave them the capability to strike across continents. Technologies to strike enemy targets from above the ground and from the sea were developed at astronomical costs. Great Britain, France, Israel, China, India and Pakistan already have nuclear capabilities in varying degrees. Iran is expected to join them soon.

It is necessary to make a distinction between a balance of peace and a balance in war. Weapons by definition are meant to strike an enemy even though they may come in handy in negotiating for peace before a global conflagration erupts once again. The fear of Armageddon is not the healthiest option for securing a lasting global peace.

In capitalist countries, the armament industry and its ancillaries capitalize themselves through the stock market. The government is both the manufacturer and the buyer, or the major partner of its suppliers. The money for expenditure on arms comes both from the taxes citizens pay and the stocks they invest in. The public is morally involved in the balance sheet of war and peace. In totalitarian countries, the government has exclusive control of the armaments industry, and total moral answerability as well as responsibility for profit and loss in war.

One of the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union was its inability to cope with many shadow wars on many fronts in many countries. It sold armaments to its allies and friends, including India. However, it failed to diversify its domestic economy because of its involvement in a global cold war. The war in Afghanistan proved to be its Vietnam and the last nail in the coffin of its empire. Ultimately, even a totalitarian superpower cannot sustain itself without the assent of a majority of its subjects or citizens.

Fifty five years ago and just five years after the communist revolution, China occupied Tibet in 1953 as an announcement of its future geo-political designs. One million Tibetans died in the systematic genocide that followed. In 1959, the Dalai Lama was forced to flee to India with thousands of his followers. Today, Dharamsala is the home of Tibetan Buddhism and not Lhasa.

China has been unilaterally claiming other territories previously demarcated as non-Chinese by its neighbours. Mao Zedong's 'prophetic' vision saw the existing borders of China extending beyond existing maps demarcated by 'imperialists'. His vision was similar to Josef Stalin's vision of the Soviet Empire that was revealed to the world in the last days of the Second World War. He wanted to hegemonize Eastern and Central Europe in the long run. Mao saw China as the liberator of Asia, which meant that he wanted Asia under Chinese hegemony.

It was not a coincidence that as the whole world was terror-stricken by the rapidly developing Cuban missile crisis in 1962, the Chinese army crossed into India at several points in an act of war. India failed miserably, at the political and diplomatic level, and suffered both military casualties and loss of territory to a neighbour it considered friendly. China still claims Arunachal Pradesh. It is friendly with Pakistan and, with a Maoist government in power in neighbouring Nepal, India has more to fear from Chinese territorial ambitions than ever before.

As civilizations, the Chinese and the Indian are very different. The Indian subcontinent had internal and external trade for two millenia B.C. The civilization that arose and evolved in India was pluralistic in content and spirit. Indians spoke many languages, practised different religions, and belonged to different races and tribes. Yet Indian civilization developed its unique syncretic character from different and disparate strands.

Thanks to this syncretism, India was able to absorb influences from both the ancient and the medieval world (including China) and arrived in the modern era as the richest and the most diverse of surviving civilizations. China developed in relative isolation. It is monolingual and is ruled by racial paranoia and/or superiority since the Han dynasty.

The Chinese people have had little exposure to the outside world for several centuries. Their communism, too, is uniquely Chinese and may have little relevance to the historical experience of other regions of the world or to the contemporary international community.

It was natural for Nehru's secular democratic India to give the Dalai Lama and his followers refuge in India in 1959, six years after China's invasion of Tibet. With its innate pluralism, Indian civilization can accommodate living Tibetan culture within its space. This could be seen by the Chinese as a perpetual thorn in their flesh, at least as long as its communist imperialism survives. China maintains a huge army and has a massive war machine with an ambitious weapons production program. In today's world, China is in the same position that the Soviet Union attained during the cold war. Its clash with India's democratic and pluralistic civilization seems inevitable in the coming decades.

This may not be the kind of Clash of Civilizations Samuel P. Huntington talks about. But here in Asia, from a subcontinental perspective, Indian civilization not only faces Islamic fundamentalism on two of its borders but it also faces Chinese communism on another. Both are fundamentalist challenges with some sympathetic support from within India. This is an uneasy scenario and it is difficult to predict what kind of future it spells for us.

—Dilip Chitre

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