the business of economics and the bamiyan buddhas.
The fact that economic rivalry and business conflicts lie at the root of most communal conflicts is something I knew. The link of economics to the rise of cultures, their continued growth and to cultural conflicts is pretty obvious. What I am not so sure of is the belief that Tourism is the answer to preservation of Cultures. Cultural objects and sites, as sights, may be preserved to draw in the money that tourists bring, but the damage that this kind business inflicts on the cultures themselves may be something they will not be able to survive.
But then reducing the sacred to just a secular sight to be seen and not worshiped is just what the expanding western business interests would want. Religions do have a way of getting in the way of business as usual.
Reducing the sacred to something that is just to be seen, has been business as usual for the West.
Seventh century Dipanker Buddha in Kathmandu. Just a sight.
Cultures exist only so long as the economies needed to support them function. The destruction of an economy always produces with it the destruction of the culture. In that context, the plundering of valuable art pieces appears more as background noise than any indication of a separate problem.
In April 2003, as US forces entered Baghdad, chaos resulting from the disbanding of the Iraqi army and the Ba'ath Party allowed the introduction of perverse incentives. Faced with a loss of jobs, money and prestige, police quickly became poachers. Unscrupulous art dealers around the world smacked their lips at the prospect of getting their grubby hands on Mesopotamian antiques, many of which have since not been sighted, let alone recovered.
Why Bamiyan was destroyed
Addressing the question of the Bamiyan Buddha statues requires a trek through history.
The most recent history is easy enough - the Taliban, apparently acting on the instructions of their Wahhabi sponsors in Saudi Arabia, destroyed the statues in March 2001 as a way of cleansing the land from the acts of infidels. In so doing, they merely repeated the history of Christian and Islamic conquests around the world, where military victories usually led to the destruction of local landmarks. The main objective of such plunder, other than the pure monetary gains to be accrued from the destruction of temples et al, was to remove any signs of any older culture existing. This allowed a rewriting of history, suggesting that the invaders had "brought" civilization to the area.
It is a conceit of Abrahamic religions to insist on the primacy of civilization, starting as it did with the rejection of Egypt's pagan culture by Moses. That the Egyptians had built an astounding civilization well before the Hittite invasions became a sundry matter, studied only for its decline. Similar fates soon befell other Asian civilizations, with the Chinese succumbing last. Even so, the decline of such civilizations had begun well before the invasion - for example, Buddhism thrived in India after it was adopted by the Emperor Ashok. It challenged the primacy of the Hindu system, but failed to provide an alternative economic framework. Indeed, by rejecting certain tasks as demeaning, Buddhism had the perverse effect of rendering a "lower" caste status to laborers and farmers in Hindu society.
What business can you provide for people who make their money on opium cultivation? The only alternative that carries sufficiently high margins is tourism, which is particularly suited to the rugged landscape of Afghanistan and its phenomenal history, even if many of the most interesting sites were destroyed by a succession of invaders. In a situation where the tourism industry assumes primacy, local populations have to protect their economic interests, which they achieve by maintaining a more open society.
The primary strategy for the various multilateral agencies is thus to provide suitable incentives for the locals to step in and protect their own heritage. Convince the Afghans that a million tourists will visit any new Bamiyan site, and new Buddha statues will not only spring up, they will be more majestic than the ones destroyed. It might seem like an awfully long-term project, but the idea presents the only proven method of aligning local interests with those of the global community.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HL09Df03.html
But then reducing the sacred to just a secular sight to be seen and not worshiped is just what the expanding western business interests would want. Religions do have a way of getting in the way of business as usual.
Reducing the sacred to something that is just to be seen, has been business as usual for the West.
Seventh century Dipanker Buddha in Kathmandu. Just a sight.
Cultures exist only so long as the economies needed to support them function. The destruction of an economy always produces with it the destruction of the culture. In that context, the plundering of valuable art pieces appears more as background noise than any indication of a separate problem.
In April 2003, as US forces entered Baghdad, chaos resulting from the disbanding of the Iraqi army and the Ba'ath Party allowed the introduction of perverse incentives. Faced with a loss of jobs, money and prestige, police quickly became poachers. Unscrupulous art dealers around the world smacked their lips at the prospect of getting their grubby hands on Mesopotamian antiques, many of which have since not been sighted, let alone recovered.
Why Bamiyan was destroyed
Addressing the question of the Bamiyan Buddha statues requires a trek through history.
The most recent history is easy enough - the Taliban, apparently acting on the instructions of their Wahhabi sponsors in Saudi Arabia, destroyed the statues in March 2001 as a way of cleansing the land from the acts of infidels. In so doing, they merely repeated the history of Christian and Islamic conquests around the world, where military victories usually led to the destruction of local landmarks. The main objective of such plunder, other than the pure monetary gains to be accrued from the destruction of temples et al, was to remove any signs of any older culture existing. This allowed a rewriting of history, suggesting that the invaders had "brought" civilization to the area.
It is a conceit of Abrahamic religions to insist on the primacy of civilization, starting as it did with the rejection of Egypt's pagan culture by Moses. That the Egyptians had built an astounding civilization well before the Hittite invasions became a sundry matter, studied only for its decline. Similar fates soon befell other Asian civilizations, with the Chinese succumbing last. Even so, the decline of such civilizations had begun well before the invasion - for example, Buddhism thrived in India after it was adopted by the Emperor Ashok. It challenged the primacy of the Hindu system, but failed to provide an alternative economic framework. Indeed, by rejecting certain tasks as demeaning, Buddhism had the perverse effect of rendering a "lower" caste status to laborers and farmers in Hindu society.
What business can you provide for people who make their money on opium cultivation? The only alternative that carries sufficiently high margins is tourism, which is particularly suited to the rugged landscape of Afghanistan and its phenomenal history, even if many of the most interesting sites were destroyed by a succession of invaders. In a situation where the tourism industry assumes primacy, local populations have to protect their economic interests, which they achieve by maintaining a more open society.
The primary strategy for the various multilateral agencies is thus to provide suitable incentives for the locals to step in and protect their own heritage. Convince the Afghans that a million tourists will visit any new Bamiyan site, and new Buddha statues will not only spring up, they will be more majestic than the ones destroyed. It might seem like an awfully long-term project, but the idea presents the only proven method of aligning local interests with those of the global community.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HL09Df03.html
posted by Satish Sharma at
14:29
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