American Savarkarite

Some authors inspire pre-conceived notions. When you pick up a book by Huntington you8217;ve probably already made up your mind about wheth...

Some authors inspire pre-conceived notions. When you pick up a book by Huntington you8217;ve probably already made up your mind about whether you8217;ll agree or go apoplectic. He is predictable yet provocative. Who Are We? examines national identity, the moral sources of the American material system, the almost philosophical centre that defines the nation growing at its periphery.

Huntington refutes the claim that America was founded by 17th century immigrants, preferring to label it a 8216;8216;settler society8217;8217;: one that put forth a new construct on, in effect, zero land. This construct, as he sees it, has shaped American culture, civilisation if you prefer, since.

8216;8216;America has always had its full share of subcultures,8221; writes Huntington. 8220;It also has had a mainstream Anglo-Protestant culture in which most of its people, whatever their subcultures, have shared8230; Millions of immigrants and their children achieved wealth, power, and status in American society precisely because they assimilated themselves into the prevailing American culture. Hence there is no validity to the claim that Americans have to choose between a white, WASPish ethnic identity and an abstract, shallow civic identity dependent on commitment to certain political principles.

8216;8216;The core of their identity is the culture that the settlers created, which generations of immigrants have absorbed, and which gave birth to the American Creed. At the heart of that culture has been Protestantism.8217;8217;

He goes on to discuss the spirit of dissent that gave birth 8212; and provided a continuum 8212; to American Protestantism and, by extension, individualism. He writes on the Protestant work ethic and how it still has Americans equating leisure with a guilt trip. To him, a hard-working, English-speaking, God-fearing Indian techie in San Francisco would be a secular recipient of the Protestant gospel preached at America8217;s birth. He is an American Savarkarite.

Who Are We? was conceptualised in the sombre aftermath of 9/11. The renewal of patriotism, of America8217;s contract with its Greater Society left Huntington with questions about why it had ebbed in the first place. It is also a conservative thinker8217;s intellectual challenge to the 8217;90s, a decade of unprecedented economic boom, but one in which that new buzzword, 8216;8216;multiculturalism8217;8217;, threatened to overwhelm America as Middle America had cherished it.

Huntington8217;s big worry is 8216;8216;Mexican immigration and Hispanisation8230; have become the driving force behind the trend toward cultural bifurcation8217;8217;. He lays down why this influx is different from previous immigrant arrivals, seeing it in terms of 8216;8216;enclave consolidation8217;8217; rather than 8216;8216;individual assimilation8217;8217;. In the border districts of Assam, they would probably agree. Huntington is blunt in his assessment: 8216;8216;There is no Americano dream. There is only the American dream created by an Anglo-Protestant society.8217;8217;

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Thankfully Huntington is not an Indian academic. Mani Shankar Aiyar and Arjun Singh would probably have wanted him detoxified in Kala Paani.