Is it a clash of civilisations?
Time to respect pluralism by G Parthasarathy Just after the Cold War ended following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Harvard Professor and former National Security Council member Samuel Huntington alluded to new fault-lines in the global order in his writings and in his book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order. Huntington held that civilizations are the highest groupings of people. They are differentiated from each other by religion, history, language and traditions. His basic thesis was that global politics is entering a new era where the fault-lines of civilizations will be the battle-lines of the future. Western Civilization uniting the USA and Europe (minus the Baltic countries and Russia) in his view would be united by the shared foundation of European culture and western Christianity. While Huntington dwelt on what he felt would be the differences between Western Civilization on the one hand and Confucian, Hindu, Japanese, Slavic Orthodox, Latin Ameri
