Historical rupture

At the outset, it may be said that for a long time countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America had maintained their own traditional economy and culture. Some of them, like India and China, have had a very old civilization. Then during nearly two centuries of colonization traditional societies came in contact of the West and this produced an enormous change in productive forces as well as culture. The traditional societies could have responded in one of the following manners:

• Total acceptance of the Western paradigm with a desire to develop their own society on the model of the West;

• Combination of East and West; and

• Rediscovery and revival of the East.

For understandable reasons, the first reaction was more dominant. It not only created a desire to become economically and technologically modern but it also changed the worldviews of the traditional societies. Here we should distinguish between economic modernization and cultural modernization. The former refers to increased use of modern science and technology for furtherance of productive capacities and economic growth, and the latter refers to changes in the value system, customs and traditions. The imperial powers, for their own administrative and ideological purposes, had created a group of thought leaders and technical experts from within the colonies who were trained in the Western countries where they learnt the values of development and modernization (and occasionally got converted to socialism). They were to lead the natives in the future. As a matter of fact, the modernization of the psycho-social character of man in the erstwhile traditional society was a phenomenon of greater significance than simply getting economic and political independence.