Occidentalism and the hatred of Westernization
Edward Said said in his highly acclaimed work Orientalism that while Orientalism existed as a proper discipline of study, the same could not be said of Occidentalism. There is no concrete body of work that represents the West for non-Western readers, the way Orientalism represents Orientals for the West.
The reasons are quite simple — the historical underdevelopment of the East compared to the West and its occupation through European (and in some cases) American colonialism meant that there was very little East-to-West mobility of academics, scholars and students of political systems. There was very little exploration of the enchanting West by voyagers. There was the odd East-to-West exchange, such as Vivekananda’s appearance at the American Congress of World Religions in 1893, which introduced Oriental culture and morality to Westerners from an Eastern perspective. Otherwise, it was mostly one-way traffic.
Therefore, there was no chance for a body of work called Occidentalism to develop in any stable, progressive manner. However, this does not mean that Occidentalism never existed or does not exist — indeed, Said appears to admit that it does. If in the West the modern Oriental is defined as backward, insular, collectivistic and unchanging, in the East, the Occidental is seen as materially wealthy but morally valueless.
The Occidental is the man of science, of reason, of courage and determination. He has the technology and the will to rule the world. His wand works in innumerable ways, sometimes to the detriment of “us” Easterners. He has written great works of art and literature (music is excluded — perhaps this requires later clarification), poetry, and made immense material progress. However, he has none of the spiritual knowledge and wisdom that “our” civilization possesses. His family is broken, he lives with his third mother and fifth father, is probably a drug addict, will be divorced four times and sleep with any woman he finds attractive — this is, by and large, the Eastern view of the Occidental.
His life is morally and spiritually barren, because he looks to material things for self-validation. He cannot find happiness there, so he enters depression. His society is not merely without any familial fabric, but is broken down and its collapse imminent, we are told. Its collapse is imminent, we have been told for decades and decades, because it is a society full of selfish, self-interested individuals and pornography telecast to children.
There is every attempt in the “Oriental” world then, of stopping the current of “Westernization”. “Western culture” — if there can be such a monolith — is materialistic, shallow and evil, its demise is certain while its best people look to the East for spiritual salvation. Yoga and meditation, which have gained mainstream popularity in the Occident, we are told are examples of such efforts at salvaging oneself.
Brilliant yet flawed writers like Edward Said probably did not grasp that the Oriental’s resistance to the influence of the Occidental’s culture was not a mere innocent attempt to protect his identity and cultural environment. It was, and is, the product of a feeling of cultural and moral superiority analogous to what the Western Orientalist feels for his culture. Said was generous to admit that the Orient was not without fault or fundamentalism, but neglected to elaborate on this because it was not his thesis at all in Orientalism.
We are thus faced with not just Orientalism, as understandably empathic Western scholars and Left-wing intellectuals believe, but with Occidentalism as a parallel force. While it is true that Occidentalism has not resulted in conquest and colonization of the West by the East, it holds tremendous emotional, psychological and moral power over the “Orientals” and the societies they live in. This is the main reason for the resistance to Westernization, or its very selective acceptance, down from the level of the family up to the state. It pervades and permeates Eastern societies and politics, it leads to absurd and illiberal law making (as a single solitary example, a ban on kissing in public in the state of Maharashtra in India), moral vigilantism (such as self-appointed custodians of culture imposing physical violence on individuals celebrating Valentine’s Day), and a general social attitude of suspicion and hostility towards the West. “We” here in India, in Pakistan, in Iran, in Indonesia caricature “you” as much as you caricatured us through the centuries.
It is true that one cannot categorise a set of countries with a broad brush such as the “Orient”. The same goes for “Occident”.
I do not mean to speak for each country in the “Orient”, or in the Third World. In fact, my experience is limited to India. But I do know that these tropes about the West exist in most of the “Orient”, with more or less viciousness, more or less bitterness, more or less strident opposition and disgust.
There is, in the East, a seemingly eternal combat between the forces of Westernization and those of traditionalism. Some cultures, like the Indian, pride themselves on being able to assimilate the best of the West, and leave out the rest. But they are unable to remain isolated from the “rest”, so they attempt to legislate their way around it. From kissing in public to LGBT rights to the clothes women wear, all becomes a denunciation of “Western culture”.
Women, are, of course, the first victims of this suspicious attitude towards Westernization. Their life is policed — they are told what to wear, where to find themselves on a Saturday evening, whom to meet and how, what not to say and so on. It used to be common for colleges in India until not long ago to impose atrocious “dress codes” on women, in an effort to stop them from being sexually harassed, thanks to Westernization. In one college in Meerut in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, women were forced to wear white traditional clothing and use of mobile phones was banned, turning them into little more than characters out of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
The tropes I describe occur not among the Indian elite, the intellectual, who is himself (or herself) “Westernized” and would welcome a reading from Edward Said or Noam Chomsky about the imperial viciousness of the West. They manifest themselves among the educated Indian middle class, the common man on the street and the unscrupulous yet conservative politician who never saw women as more than underlings for men until he hit the roads of Mumbai.
The Westernized elite does not pay much attention to these commoners. For him they are objects of disdain or pity. He or she occasionally publishes articles deploring dress codes, mobile phone and social media bans, the refusal to include sex education in the school syllabus, the selective targeting of women, and so on. But you never get the kind of outrage at this Occidentalism as you do at the recurring political manifestations of Orientalism in the West. By and large, our Westernized, English-speaking intellectual class has turned their backs to the ill-effects of Occidentalism on the street and in the home, and has focused its efforts on, for example, condemning Islamophobia in Texas (or that of India’s ruling Hindu nationalist BJP government).
While Orientalism is the result of conquest and imperialism, Occidentalism owes its existence primarily to the absence of a Renaissance-like movement in the East, and the resulting lack of evolutionary development over time. Some intellectuals, however, are much to eager to blame even this circumstance on Orientalism, which they claim held down the progress of the East for centuries.
Partial exceptions to the culture of Occidentalism are Japan and South Korea, which are the most liberal countries in Asia. They are also developed countries, have a far stronger culture of accountability and far greater respect for human rights than in the rest of Asia. But one has to remember that Japan, at least, is an individualistic society — a rare exception for Asia. The core issue here is that the lack of a Renaissance in the East meant that societies, founded throughout the world on the ideal of collectivism, have remained so in the East even as the West has moved to individualism. Collectivism is the most basic feature of Eastern societies, and until it gives way to individualism, one cannot hope for lasting change.
