The Evils of Westernization

Supplement 4

To achieve control of the machine, one must build it. Something built by another-even if it is a charm or a sort of talisman against envy-certainly carries something of the unknown, something of fearsome "unseen worlds" beyond human access. It harbors a mystery. The one who carries that talisman does not possess it but in a sense is possessed by it in living under its aegis, in taking refuge in it and living in constant dread of giving it offense. (pp. 79-80)

According to Jalal, the main reason for Iran's occidentosis is the mode of thinking which says: "Now that we are an oil-producing country and the European brings us everything from soap to nuts on a silver platter, why should we go to the trouble of building factories, heavy industry, with all the attendant problems...." (p. 81) It is due to this way of thinking that almost the entire oil income goes to the West:

The Westerners extract, refine, transport, and compute the cost of the oil themselves and figure our annual share at, say, forty million pounds sterling, given us as credits toward purchase of their manufactured goods and deposited in their own banks in our accounts. We are necessarily compelled to return these credits by buying from them. Who are they? Forty percent is America and its satellites, 40 percent England and its adherents, and the rest, France, the Netherlands, and other Western European nations. In return for the oil they take, we must import machines, and in the wake of the machines, specialists in the machines, dialectologists, ethnologists, musicologists, and art historians. (pp. 83-85)

In this context Jalal refers to the under-the-counter transactions, which sometimes involve estimable Orientalists like Peter Avery, a fellow of the reputed Cambridge. It came as a revelation to Jalal that people are similarly small around the world. In 1962 Iran had thirty thousand foreign experts, engineers and specialists. This number multiplied in the coming years under de facto American rule.

The seventh chapter entitled "Asses in Lions Skins, or Lions on the Flag" is a vivid description of occidentotics, and is relevant to all countries and nations under the spell of Westernization.

The term Gharbzadegi was actually coined by Ahmad Fardid, as Jalal himself acknowledged, but it would have .lapsed into obscurity were it not for Jalal's book. This chapter forms the core of the book. I quote liberally from this chapter because of another reason also, that is, the passages quoted are the best examples of Jalal's powerful style, which is retained to a great extent by Campbell.

Campbell, in his foreword, explains the difficulties of translating Ali Ahmad's style which "has a certain rough and uneven quality, marked by great informality and a deliberate disregard for the syntax of conventional literary expression." The translator has made an attempt to convey not only the ideas of the original text but also something of the tone in which they were presented.

The following account of the Westoxicated Iranian is equally true of all Westernized people of different Eastern nations who are infected by the epidemic called rootlessness. They have been uprooted from their native soil, alienated from their own culture, society, people, past, heritage and are even estranged from their present. They live in a vacuum, lead the life of parasites and feed their lust with exported luxuries. Ideas and fashionable trends in arts also form a part of their mental luxury. Here follows Jalal Ali Ahmad's portrayal of this class:

The occidentotic is a man totally without belief or conviction, to such an extent that he not only believes in nothing, but also does not actively disbelieve in anything-you might call him a syncretist. He is a timeserver. Once he gets across the bridge, he doesn't care if it stands or falls. He has no faith, no direction, no aim, no belief, neither in God nor in humanity. He cares neither whether society is transformed or not nor whether religion or irreligion prevails.

He is not even irreligious. He is indifferent. He even goes to the mosque at times, just as he goes to the club or the movies. But everywhere he is only a spectator. It is just as if he had gone to see a soccer game.

He is always to be seen off in the grandstands. He never invests anything of himself-even to the extent of moist eyes at the death of a friend, attentiveness at a shrine, or reflection in the hours of solitude. In fact he is not accustomed to solitude at all; he flees it. Because he is in terror of himself, he turns up everywhere. He offers opinions, if it is appropriate, and particularly if it is fashionable to offer opinions, but only to someone from whom he hopes to gain some further benefit.

Never do you hear from him any outcry or protest, any but or why or wherefore. He will explain everything with the utmost gravity and grandiloquence. He will feign optimism.

The occidentotic seeks ease. He lives in the moment, although not in the sense the philosophers intend. If his car is running and he looks debonair, nothing troubles him. If in some distant age, concern for offspring, bread, clothing, and provisions held Sa'di back from spiritual wayfaring, the occidentotic, with his head submerged in his own fodder, will do nothing for the sake of anyone else. He doesn't go looking for any headaches for himself, and he easily shrugs things off.

Because he has figured out just what his job is, because he doesn't take an unconsidered step, because he sees every action as the product of an equation, he doesn't stick his nose into others' affairs, let alone feel concern for their welfare. The occidentotic normally has no specialty. He is jack-of-all-trades and master of none- But because he is schooled, literate, and perhaps educated, he knows to use polysyllables and to bluff his way into every company.

Perhaps once he had a specialty, but he has seen that in this country one cannot, with a single specialty, grasp the horn of plenty. Therefore he necessarily has involved himself in other lines of work. He is just like the old women in a household who in the course of lifetimes of experience have learned a little about everything, although their knowledge is limited by the perspective of illiterate women. The occidentotic too knows a little about everything, and his knowledge is limited by the perspective of the occidentotic.

He has tabs on the topics of the day-what will be useful on television, what will be useful on the educational commission and at the seminar, what will be useful for the mass circulation newspapers, what will be useful for talks at the club.

The occidentotic has no character- He is a thing without authenticity. His person, his home, and his words convey nothing in particular, and everything in general. It is not that he is cosmopolitan, that the world is his home. He is at home nowhere rather than everywhere. He is an amalgam of singleness without character and character without singularity. Because he has no security, he dissembles.

In the very act of being so polite and sociable, he mistrusts whom he is speaking to. And because suspicion dominates our age, he must never open his heart to anyone. The only palpable characteristic he has is fear. In the West individuals' characters are sacrificed to their field of specialization, but the occidentotic has neither. He has only fear: fear of tomorrow, fear of dismissal, fear of anonymity ...

The occidentotic is effete. He is effeminate. He attends to his grooming a great deal. He spends much time sprucing himself up. Sometimes he even plucks his eyelashes. He attaches a great deal of importance to his shoes and his wardrobe, and to the furnishings of his home. It always seems he has been unwrapped from gold foil or come from some European "maison."

He buys the latest prodigy in automotive engineering every year. His house, which once had a porch and a cellar, a pool, awnings, and a vestibule, now looks like something different every day. One day it resembles a seaside villa with picture windows all around, and full of fluorescent lamps. Another day it resembles a cabaret, full of gaudy junk and bar stools.

The next day all the walls are painted one color and triangles of all colors cover every surface. In one comer there is a hi-fi, in another a television, in another a piano for the young lady, in others stereo loudspeakers. The kitchen and other nooks and crannies are packed with gas stoves, electric washers, and other odds and ends.

Thus the occidentotic is the most faithful consumer of the West's industrial goods. If he should rise one morning and find that the hairdresser, the tailor, the shoeshiner, and the repairman have all closed up shop, he would turn to the qibla in desperation (that is, he would do so if he knew where the qibla was).

All his preoccupations and Western products are more essential to him than any school, mosque, hospital, or factory. It is for his sake that we have an architecture with no roots in our culture....

The occidentotic hangs on the words and handouts of the West. He has nothing to do with what goes on in our little world, in this comer of the East. If perchance he is interested in politics, he is cognizant of the faintest right or left tendencies in the British Labour Party and is more familiar with the current U.S.

senators than with the ministers in his own government. And he knows more about the staff of Time or the News Chronicle than about some nephew way off in Khurasan. And he supposes them more veracious than a prophet because all these have more influence on the affairs of his country than any domestic politician, commentator, or representative.

If he is interested in letters, his only concem is knowing who won this year's Nobel Prize or who was awarded the Goncourt or Pulitzer Prizes. And if he is interested in research, he folds his hands and closes his eyes to all the problems within the country that could be studied. He seeks to learn only what some orientalist has said and written about the questions within his field. If he is one of the ordinary people who read the weeklies and the pictorials, we have seen what a sorry lot they are.

If there used to be a time when one could silence opponents and end all arguments by citing one verse of the Qur'an or one tradition transmitted in Arabic, now one does so by relating one sentence by some European, whatever the subject under discussion. (pp. 94-98).