From The Ruins Of Empire by Pankaj Mishra

From The Week of October 30, 2012 Though we, particularly in the West, have come to understand the crimes and the pains of colonialism, this enlightenment has come at a terrible cost. After all, to learn these lessons, we were compelled to plunge the better part of three continents, Africa, Asia and South America, into chaos and brutality, perfidy and corruption. We created entire ruling bureaucracies which, though their names and their masters have crumbled into dust, have born lasting legacies that have lived on decades, even centuries, after they were forced on the nations subjected to the will of industrialized powers. We cannot avoid the truth of this. We cannot look away from the costs of what those men did. We all bear a measure of responsibility for righting that epic wrong. But there is a deeper truth exposed by colonialism's practice, a truth about power's universal destructiveness that Mr. Mishra does well to expose in his intellectual history of colonial and post-colonial Asia.

For the better part of 250 years, western Europe did its level best to subjugate the world. Casting themselves in the role of light-bringers, men of skill and knowledge who would bring wisdom to the wild, mysterious east, they addicted these monarchies and fiefdoms, empires and tribes, to trade and narcotics, money and wealth. In the name of free trade, that most celebrated of freedom fighters, these nations conquered half the world, not so much with their navies and their cannons, though, these weapons were deployed when necessary. No, victory came through infestation and strong-arming, economic trickery and smart politicking, which saw the unstable eastern powers succumb to the western spell.

There were, undoubtedly, western men who endeavored to do well by their eastern brothers, but whatever blessings such rare gems provided to the newly acquired peoples of the east were more than offset by the darkness of economic depravity and the humiliation of cultural inferiority. This was at least the view of the Chinese, Indian and Arabic intellectuals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who rose to prominence within their lands. From Tagore to Al-Afghani, from Gandhi to Sun Yatsen, Mr. Mishra reconstructs the thoughts of these bright but tragic Asian stars and their hopes for a new, united Asia, one that acknowledged its own cultural weaknesses by accepting and benefiting from western strengths without sacrificing those spiritual virtues that helped create civilizations millennia older than the one subjecting them. Their dreams are expansive and glorious, their struggles noble and inspirational, but were their messages for pan-Asian unity listened to? Were their visions implemented in an Asia free of colonialism?

From The Ruins of Empire is a staggering and revelatory read. Energized by the thoughts of Asian scholars envisioning a better, brighter future for their continent, it perfectly encapsulates the fundamental tragedy that emanates from revolutionary thought and the revolutions they ignite. Subjugated people naturally blame their conquerers for ill-treatment that occurs in any inequitable relationship. But in levying this blame, the defeated imagine that if they were themselves but better, purer, smarter, if they but adopted the best of what made their enemies great while preserving the core of their own identities, they could throw off their imperial shackles and be born as free peoples, bound together in common and glorious unity. They see themselves capable of creating lasting peace and stable, centralized governments if given the chance. For are their cultures not older and wiser? Are their motives not purer and higher?

But of course, this is only half of the truth. We are all weak. We are all corruptible. For it is power that corrupts us. Colonialism is merely a symptom of the lust for power. Asia is the proof. For once the great wickedness that was colonialism was banished from its shores, there was no utopia realized, no stable government implemented. Asia went on as it has always been, as most of humanity has always been, dominated by powerful men who answer to no one but themselves and the armies and the structures that prop-up their dictatorships. These nations may well be democracies in name, but they are not so in reality. These are merely pretty fictions that conceal two darker truths: that power is the ultimate corrupter and that we are all equally unwise.

From The Ruins of Empire is a wonderful demonstration of power's corrosiveness, of how dreams of cultural superiority are bound to succumb to their own gravity and be sucked down into the black hole of arrogance. Mr. Mishra has captured the lives of tragic men and their tragic dreams and used them to reveal these truths. And he's done it with force and flair. Colonialism's legacy must not be forgotten, but it is merely the surface of what plagues this most populous, diverse and fascinating continent. Perhaps, in the future, greatness will blossom from the seeds planted by the intellectuals who threw themselves at colonialism's battlements, but it will not come until these deeper truths are understood. (4/5 Stars)