Liberty and slavery, then, necessarily coexisted in the west, but not here; the extended family was a corporate unit that fitted perfectly in the collectivist state.
Thus, when the Spartans were at the gates, Pericles, that imperialist scoundrel and early Churchill, was able to boast:
"The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbour for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty" [7].
In Asia, jealous surveillance over what others do is the norm: The author knows a lady who wanted to emigrate from Bangladesh because she was driven to distraction by the constant inquiries of her friends, family, colleagues and neighbours as to whether she was pregnant or not! Only when she had her first baby did the incessant nagging stop. My wife and I don't have children. Whenever we meet somebody new (a total stranger, of course), the first question she would ask my wife is: "How long have you been married?" The second question: "How many children do you have?" Third question: "Have you seen a doctor? I know this very good doctor. My sister-in-law was having trouble having babies, but she visited this doctor a couple of times and ...." (At this point, of course, my wife is sorely tempted to ask: "And does the baby look like the doctor?")
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But what is not Asian are fascism and totalitarianism. These were western imports: Mao Zedong upended Asian values when students began to beat teachers, something we witnessed recently in Bangladesh.
"Bangladesh has a tradition of respect for dissent," proclaimed the Economist three years ago, with a backward glance. Not any more. We've had one-party military rule in the past, not once, but three times, when we were never muzzled, as the London newspaper notes. The ruling party today has a narrative that citizens question or criticise at their peril. Democracy has produced, in India, Bangladesh, Russia and Turkey, totalitarianism of a Maoist order: Hindutva, Bengalism, nationalism and fundamentalism, respectively. This is unAsian.
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