Curbing Cultural
Exchange
There are 195 countries in the world today. There was a time
when the word “country” meant the countryside, the area surrounding a walled
city. Civilization and Empire are words used to describe those political and
cultural identities whose expanses of power or authority had ever changing
boundaries. Today’s “Country” is a political
term used to describe a territory with well-defined and heavily protected
borders.
Countries or nation states, emerged with the growth of
capitalist economies, the Age of Discovery when the competition between
monarchs for discovering new lands and trade rights, led to the formal
demarcation of kingdoms and realms. As Ali Khan writes in his paper “Extinction
of Nation States”, the King of the French became King of France.
In the 16 C the Dutch jurist, Hugo Grotius, developed the idea
of territorial sovereignty which became the framework for the modern nation
state. Eurocentric colonialism and global
economic systems imposed this model across the world.
Gradually each country established a uniform culture as a
matter of State policy. State languages were imposed, centralized laws governed
every aspect of people’s lives, national flags and anthems were created and
national armies fiercely guard the borders.
The great casualty of this defining of borders has been the
free dissemination and exchange of knowledge and cultures. Just looking at two
sources that have benefitted the world that are inconceivable in today’s
political climate, the Silk Route and the Islamic Empire, we realize how much
we have lost.
From the 2 BC to the 15th century when sea
trade became organized, the Silk
route connected China, the Mediterranean
and Africa and everything in between.
Along this route traders, travelers, missionaries and adventurers,
exchanged goods, shared discoveries, cultures, languages, and philosophies.
Apart from silk which was a guarded secret until a 6C Christian monk smuggled caterpillar
eggs into Byzantine , there was a free transfer of knowledge. From China came silk, porcelain, the art of
casting iron, gunpowder, alchemy, papermaking, printing with moveable type, Chinese medicine and acupuncture,
clock-making, the compass, and of course tea.
China itself acquired a taste for Indian sandalwood, Persian saffron and pistachios, Egyptian glass and
horses from Ferghana. Craftsmen and scientists
from Europe, were invited to China to
share their skills on ambitious projects. Buddhism, Christianity and
Islam entered China through the silk route.
The Muslim Empire was even more generous as it did not aim to enrich Makkah or Medina,
but to enrich the lands they settled in.
A unique borderless empire,
scholars, Sufis, scientists, administrators, artists and craftsmen considered the entire
dar-ul Islam as home. They generously shared their discoveries and transferred
knowledge they had acquired to any seeker, Muslim or non-Muslim. They preserved and built upon the philosophy
and sciences of the Greeks and Indians, through translations and established libraries. Indian numerals and the concept of
zero, Chinese papermaking, navigational aids, medicine, sciences, international
law, urban planning, the concept of
hospitals, structures of music and
musical instruments, architecture
and literature, and innumerable inventions, inspired Europe to modernize.
Today travel and the exchange of knowledge and cultures is
restricted by visas, copyright, or hefty university fees. The internet is the closest instrument for the
free universal right to knowledge but is
subtly managed and restricted by search engines. Marco Polo or Ibn Batutta
would find this a strange world.
Seekers of a better life take perilous journeys across
mountains or seas only to face hostility.
The unrestricted dissemination of knowledge and goods is left to
underground networks of havala, khepias, smugglers, code crackers, and hackers,
who perhaps will one day be considered heroes.
Durriya Kazi
15 April 2019
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