The Clash of Samuel Huntington and Amartya Sen

Amartya Sen’s latest book “Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny” is in the nature of a belated refutation of Samuel Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations?”that appeared as an article in Foreign Affairs journal in 1993, and which was expanded into a book form in 1996. Sen uses the word violence and not clash. But remember that Huntington came out with another book in 2004 titled “Who are we? The Challenges to America’s National Identity” wherein the picture is painted of a future America with the Latinos dividing the country into two languages and two cultures. Perhaps Sen has borrowed the word “Identity” from this book’s title into the title of his book in order to expand his anti-Huntington thesis.

First of all, it must be stated that Huntington is a political scientist whereas Sen is an economist. Therefore Sen is found treading into strange areas of sociology and politics. This is not to deny his enormous scholarship apparent in the book. Secondly, there are others like Jonathan Fox and Serge Lang who have long ago refuted Huntington on the basis of quantitative analysis and historical studies. So, why then this late thesis by Amartya Sen?

What is the sum and substance of the advocacy of Sen? To know that, let us see what Huntington had to say. He said “It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic…the dominating source of conflict will be cultural”. That was to say that since the Cold War on ideology of democracy versus communism was over, the new conflicts will be culture-based. He divided the world’s culture into seven civilizations mostly based on religion –Western, Muslim. Hindu, Confucian etc. (It is strange that Israel was included in Western and Buddhism was totally left out). Islam was made out to be a particular villain as “Islam has bloody borders”.

Amartya’s thesis is that you cannot put humanity into just seven compartments that are expected to clash. Religion as the singular or primary identity is anathema to him. An individual actually belongs to a variety of groups. As he says, “The same person can be without any contradiction, an American citizen, of Caribbean origin, with African ancestry, a Christian, a liberal, a woman, a vegetarian, a long-distance runner, a historian, a school teacher, a novelist, a feminist, a heterosexual, a believer in gay and lesbian rights, a theatre owner, an environment activist, a tennis fan, a jazz musician…” Therefore every person has plural identities with the availability of choice and reasoning. Therefore, “Our shared humanity gets savagely challenged when the manifold divisions in the world are unified into one allegedly dominant system of classification – in terms of religion, or community..”.

At first glance and without going into the arguments, it is fairly easy to perceive that both Huntington’s and Sen’s opposing positions are at different ends of extremism, the only commonality between them being utter naivete. It is difficult to say that the truth is somewhere in between them since historical progression has shown a totally different direction.

Indeed wars of civilizations are not new. The Crusades between Christians and Islam are perhaps the foremost example of it. Today, a thousand years later, can we think of civilizational clashes when nuclear deterrence prevents any two powers (civilizations) from clashing? Pakistan coming under the Islamic brush has nuclear strike power. Was Huntington dreaming or aiming at some wish fulfillment?

And of what avail is the lengthy description by Sen of the plural identities of an individual, while analyzing the root cause of clashes? You don’t witness wars between vegetarians and non vegetarians, long distance runners and short distant runners, historians and non-historians, school teachers and non-school teachers, novelists and non-novelists, heterosexuals and non-heterosexuals, theatre lovers and non-theatre lovers, tennis fans and non-tennis fans etc. Sen has missed the obvious point that indeed the major dividing factors among human beings are religion and culture.

Sen has however rightly pointed out that there have been clashes within Islam. This is intra-civilization and not inter-civilization. He has drawn attention to the historical breakaway of Bangladesh from Pakistan, both Islamic, after bloody conflicts. The conflicts were based upon political suppression and linguistic differences. Sen has however failed to refer to the eight year war between Iraq and Iran in the 1980s, essentially between Shias and Sunnis. The future might witness any number of clashes between Sunnis and Shias, in Iraq, in Pakistan and elsewhere, given their past historical track record. But other religions do not have the same problem. It would be difficult to expect bloody clashes between Hinayana Buddhists and Mahayana Buddhists, Hindu Iyers and Hindu Iyengars, Swetambara Jains and Digambara Jains, Protestant Christians and Catholics ( forgetting Northern Ireland for the present).

This is not to say that the world would be free of non-civilizational clashes. Tutsis and Hutus have clashed within the same country. Two warring factions have been the cause of ongoing ruination of Sudan. India has been a constant witness to sporadic Hindu-Muslim riots. So, you can have cases of conflicts within nations.

After the Huntington book came out, the world has witnessed the new phenomenon of rising anti-West Islamic Fundamentalism. This by itself is not a manifestation of a “clash of civilizations”. At best some rogue elements have been targeting buildings and killing civilians. The American war on terrorism leading to the attack on Iraq is just an imperial excuse based on ulterior motives. The central cause of Islamic hatred of the West is the Israel and Palestine issue. Israel had no business to cling to annexed territories for four decades and the West has shown utter idiocy and short-sightedness in their support of Israel.

Coming back to Sen, credit must be given to him for his handling of the issue of multiculturism. Western nations have gone multi-ethnic, and ethnic clashes are being witnessed from time to time. Sen has cited the example of Britain that has deftly and successfully handled the differing ethnic communities since the riots of 1981. Sen however rightly points out that Britain’s policy of aiding the setting up of community based schools (like Hindu schools, Muslim schools) is not at all a good palliative. He calls this “Plural Monoculturism” and not true “Multiculturism” wherein real integration of the communities are expected to take place. Integration of communities at the school level is most important. Though inter-community marriages are on the rise, that kind of multi-cultural integrating platform only gives slow and marginal results.

Sen has also admirably taken the opportunity to chastise the rich G-8 nations for provoking conflicts through mindless sale of arms. America, the so-called champion of democracy, has endlessly propped up ruling tyrants in various countries and selling to them arms over arms. Sen points out that 85 percent of world sales of arms are by the G-8 countries. Two thirds of these armaments go to poor developing nations. In the background of this scenario, the West’s concern for and advocacy of peace and democracy are empty shibboleths.

Interestingly, Sen has come out with an apologia for Islam by describing its contributions to Western civilization which tend to be ignored by the West. The fact is that Islam merely transmitted to the west Indian mathematics and astronomy. The scholarship that evolved in the Islamic territories happened not because the post Mohammed conquering tribes were highly educated and civilized but because the centers such as Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo etc which came under Arabic Islam rule were already highly civilized. Sen has not handled the issue of Islamic Fundamentalism in depth and has not offered any suggestion as to the final destiny of the various types of fundamentalism, Islamic or Christian or whatever.

Sen’s book derives its significance from his passionate advocacy for individual choice and reasoning, determination of human destiny on the basis of a plurality of factors and circumstances and not by religious compartments, and the lessening of the possibility of conflicts by the elimination of arms sales by western powers.