Letters From Europe : An Asian Perspective 2000-2014

In the eurocentric culture of the West, as Chaklader Mahboob-ul Alam, the author of this book who had been a regular columnist, sees that people are often blinded by a false sense of superiority and an obsession with skin colour. Everybody wants to be “whiter than white”. Every issue involving ethnicity, race, class and gender is looked at from this angle. Chaklader Alam observes that European colonialism, undoubtedly, is at the root of this very narrow intellectual perspective of the world. It has given rise to a simplistic oppositional thinking process which uses a binary method of “dividing the world and its people into hard and fast categories like “good versus evil” or “civilized versus savages”. Professor Paula S. Rothenberg wrote in a slightly different context, “this arrogant approach carries with it the rationale for the unequal distribution of power, privilege and opportunity that characterizes society”. The author has a completely different worldview. In his opinion, there are no hard and fast categories. Everything is constantly changing, adapting to new circumstances and evolving, hopefully for the better. We believe that this book will arouse curiosity among the readers, provoke them to ask questions and to seek answers from many different sources.