The previous chapters of Ashok’s new book can be found here and here. To sneak behind the paywall, don’t forget to subscribe today!
Chapter Summary:
In this chapter, I will present the origins and the mindset of a class of cosmopolitan people that I fondly refer to as the Cosmopolite. Cosmopolites tend to be urban, very adaptable and highly educated, but not necessarily wealthy. Many are, as they themselves say in rueful jest, over-educated and under-employed. Regardless, what they all have in common is a shared sense of aesthetics and political values. I will also gently suggest that they are not as tolerant, open-minded or liberal as they imagine themselves to be.
The Cosmopolite could only have been created by globalization and the kind of dense urban centers that brought in people from all over the world. This kind of environment resulted in the development of a very particular kind of person who could survive and thrive in places (and amidst people) that they had no previous connection to. As we will see, this is an unusual kind of existence.
Having changed countries myself five times, and having lived in far too many cities to count, I consider myself a bona fide Cosmopolite. However, having grown up in the small towns of Kerala throughout the sixties and seventies, I also know something about how the rest of the world lives.
Let me say that it takes enormous effort and skill to move to a new place and to try and build connections outside of the traditional markers of identity, such as land, family, race and religion. This makes the Cosmopolite an exceptional being, who has the power to transform not just her own life, but even challenge what it means to live as an individual and a social being.
THE SECOND LIE THAT KILLED DEMOCRACY - COSMOPOLITANISM
by Ashok Panikkar
The Second Lie: The Cosmopolitan is a tolerant, open-minded, and liberal being.
Vivek was a schoolmate, and we had much in common. We mostly read the same books, played the same sports, and listened to the same kind of music. Being academically brighter than I, he went into Engineering, while I went all over the place. We also had something else in common—we were both emphatically urban, and for Indians of our generation, very Westernized. We were most at home in cities, safe from the probing eyes of neighbors and disapproving elders. While I spent much of my twenties and thirties in Bangalore, he lived in Mumbai shuttling around the suburbs, moving from bachelor pads to better apartments, and dating a bunch of attractive, modern Indian women. By his late thirties, he had an opportunity to go abroad to work with a multinational company, so he broke his lease, wished his parents well, amicably ended his current romantic relationship and moved to a suburb in Houston, Texas.
