The Evils of Westernization

Supplement 3

All colonies of the West in the East had to meet this challenge. For instance, the Indian subcontinent, which remained under the British colonial rule virtually for about two centuries, underwent a process of Westernization, but it could affect a minority of civil servants and upper ruling class only, and failed to engulf the vast majority of the Muslim and non-Muslim population.

The Western education system was thrust upon the subcontinent partly due to needs of the British rulers for efficient functionaries for their administration, and partly because a few far-sighted leaders considered the old Muslim and Hindu systems of education out-dated and felt that the Indians' acquaintance with modern sciences was the only means of rescuing them from total destruction. A section of orthodox Muslim 'ulama' and staunch champions of Hindu culture put up some resistance to the Western influence.

This resistance, though not lasting long, served as a warning as well as a safety measure and effective restraint in checking complete surrender of India to the W est. Thus, the Indians were enabled to master modern scientific knowledge and its tools without being totally alienated from their own cultural traditions. Only a negligible minority of timeservers took pride in Anglicizing themselves, but the majority of the Muslims, Hindus, and other communities, including even new converts to Christianity, retained and preserved their traditional style of life.

As a consequence of firm adherence to their native traditions, Indians learnt modern sciences and proved themselves to be the equals, in specialized fields, of the Westerners, but at the same time they retained their "Indianness". Contrarily, in Iran, after the early resistance against Westernization by the clergy was repressed by force, there was no check against Westernization.

It is more tragic that instead of trying to specialize in modern sciences they remained content in imitating Western ways of dressing, living and eating, and they forcibly unveiled their women without initiating them into modern spirit. Another factor that accelerated superficial Westernization was affluence, which came in the wake of the oil money.

Jalal repeatedly uses the phrase "the ugly head of oil" for referring to the negative consequences of the oil. Though the lion's share of oil revenue was usurped by the Western powers and companies, yet the remnant of it was enough to ensure Iranians that they could buy all they needed from the West.

They became accustomed to the use of the machine without having technical know-how. Gradually they became more and more easygoing and comfort-loving, and surrendered their social, cultural, political, and economic freedom to the despotism of the machine. When Jalal curses the machine and holds it responsible for Iran's slavery to the machine-producing West, his criticism issues from a realization that the machine played the key role in subjecting Iran to occidentosis. The imported machine and technology required expertise, which was not available in the country, and hiring of foreign experts meant importing the necessary paraphernalia.

which was accompanied by all sorts of foreign cultural influence, including that of the Orientalists, sociologists, political analysts, functionaries of cultural exchange programmes, etc. With all this, Iran's subjection to occidentosis was complete. The same process took place in the Arab countries also with some minor differences. But probably the pre-Revolution Iran had become much more Western in its life-style than any other Muslim or Eastern country.

All diseases produce corresponding antibodies. Similarly the plague of occidentosis produced from within writers like Jalal and a combating resistance force in the form of the 'ulama', who untiringly fought against all forms of Western supremacy. This concerted struggle ultimately culminated in the movement led by Imam Khumayni. Jalal witnessed its beginning and anticipated correctly its far-reaching socio-political effects.

The fifth chapter '"The War of Contradictions", brings out the main contradictions of the Iranian society caused by the machine transformation. The logic of machine consumption compelled premature urbanization, as a consequence of which villages were deserted and agriculture destroyed. This change forced Iranian consumers to be dependent on foreign food grains and frozen or tinned food products.

The entire Iranian economy collapsed. The figures which are supplied and analysed by Jalal concern the years 1331-1340 (1952-1961), which marked just the beginning of Iran's dependence on the West, and particularly the U.S.A. Desertion of the countryside and total collapse of agriculture in the coming years turned Iran into a country spoon-fed by the West. Oil reserves were drilled and exported with an alarmingly fast rate. No long-term planning was even conceived at any level. The White Revolution did nothing except darkening the conceivable future of the nation. Urbanization and occidentosis everywhere and always go hand in hand:

First, the new urban resident attends initially to the wants of his stomach and then to those of the region beneath his stomach, and for the sake of the latter, to his grooming. (p. 66)

In this period, as compared to the most advanced cities of the world, Tehran had 2200 licensed men's barbers and women's hairdressers and 2500 unlicensed ones. Comparing this with London's 4300 barbers and hairdressers, or Moscow's 3900, one can appreciate how much the people of Tehran devoted themselves to maintaining their appearance. Similarly the number of cinema houses and other places of refuge from urban anxiety, home and family, school, and sexual and other deprivations increased stupendously.

The bank accounts of the Hollywood film-makers were incessantly fed from the pockets of lower and middle class Third World citizens. The amounts spent and earned in this business were staggeringly high. Secondly, the problem of security grew serious day by day. Thirdly, traditional industries and handicrafts were ruined.

Fourthly, a whole course of time is needed to accustom people to the use of the machine. In the West, the people's consciousness and mode of living developed with the evolution of the machine, whereas in Iran its introduction on a large scale was so sudden that people in general lost the sense of all proportion. A simple villager came to the city and w as astounded to such a degree that he fell an easy prey to all sorts of temptations, which led him to a life of easy-money and crime.

In this process corruption was logically accepted as a way of life.

Fifthly, in a medieval social set-up that did not provide women with respectable work and valued their labour much cheaper than that of men, women were superficially emancipated. Without being trained in any trade of social significance, they had no other job but to freshen and exhibit themselves as objects of sex. Sixthly, ninety per cent of the people of Iran have deep-rooted faith in the return of the Twelfth Imam (A), "all awaiting him, each in his own way; because none of the Iranian governments ever lived up to the least of its promises; for oppression, injustice, repression, and discrimination had been always pandemic."

In such a clime of waiting for a just government, propagation of the idea of a national government with all its tools and institutions of oppression, the SAVAK and the torture, and an alien system of education could cause only a wider breach between faith and practice. Such a system could breed either cynics and rebels or timeservers and hypocrites. Another contradiction to which Jalal attracts attention is that in this age of shrinking international boundaries with all the affluence that provides every Iranian an opportunity for travel, Iranians remained usually ignorant of their immediate neighbours and their cultures :

But if the Afghan and I, united in our religion, language, and racial stock, know nothing of each other or if to travel to Iraq Or India is harder than to penetrate the iron Curtain, it is because we are within the sphere of influence of one corporation and the Afghan in that of another.

Jalal's conclusion is that the world is compartmentalized according to the interests of our masters who pull our strings from behind the scene and we submit like puppets to them. In Jalal's view, the most dangerous of all the contradictions arising from occidentosis is our ignorance of our own situation in that part of the world in which significant events are taking place.

The locus of threat has been transferred to the Middle East. The sixth chapter contains some positive suggestions as to how we can break the spell of occidentosis. Jalal says that the road Iran has so far followed is to remain only a consumer of the machine, to submit utterly to this twentieth-century juggernaut.

... First we need an economy consistent with the manufacture of machines, that is, an independent economy. Then we need an educational system, then a furnace to melt the metal and impress it with the human will. Then we need schools where these skills may be practically imparted. Then we need factories to convert the metal into machines and other industrial goods. And then we need markets to make them available to the people in the towns and villages.