A thoughtful cautionary voice

Monday, June 12, 2006 Pankaj Mishra's resistance to temptation

In a piece written to coincide with the launch of his new book Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan and Beyond, Pankaj Mishra argues that large sections of opinion in India and China have been persuaded of the virtues of the free-market model of development without scrutinising sufficiently the dangers attendant on this way forward. Western elites, for their part, are keen to see India and China enter modernity in this fashion, and are happy to flag us as emerging superpowers. Mishra (like another perceptive Indian thinker with whom he shares certain affinities, Ashis Nandy) argues:

As India and China rise with their consumerist middle classes in a world of finite energy resources, it is easy to imagine that this century will be ravaged by the kind of economic rivalries and military conflicts that made the last century so violent. In any case, the hope that fuels the pursuit of endless economic growth - that billions of customers in India and China will one day enjoy the lifestyles of Europeans and Americans - is an absurd and dangerous fantasy. It condemns the global environment to early destruction, and looks set to create reservoirs of nihilistic rage and disappointment among hundreds of millions of have-nots.

As the piece continues I find Mishra to be less persuasive than usual: some of his interpretations of facts are problematic, and his subject is so large as to probably defeat comprehensive treatment in a short essay. But in general I find him to be a thoughtful cautionary voice running counter to many of the currents of our times.

Indeed, the launch of his new book is an occasion to revisit some of Mishra's brilliant work over the last decade, in which he has emerged both as a modern master of the personal essay and an unusual and highly articulate commentator on modern Indian politics and literature. I feel great admiration for the dedication with which Mishra has taken himself to all kinds of places and tried to experience all kinds of things.

An archive of Mishra's recent reviews can be found here, and another archive of pieces for Outlook, containing several good tough-minded essays from the late nineties, is here. Tim Worstall supplies a rebuttal of several points made by Mishra in his Guardian piece here. Chandrahas, 3:13 PM 3 Comments