RIZAL AND THE ASIAN RENAISSANCE

An Asian Renaissance must involve cultural rebirth and empowerment, not simply cultural jingoism.

In 1886, a young Asian student wrote from Europe the following lines dedicated to his country: “Recorded in the history of human suffering is a cancer so malignant that the least touch irritates it and awakens such agonizing pains.”

Alone and far away, Jose Rizal tried to invoke the memory of the Philippines to compare it with countries he had seen. But each time the same image appeared to him—the social cancer of colonialism.

Rizal fomented a critical consciousness of the fundamental problems in the colonial society of his times—specifically in the Philippines but no less applicable to the rest of Asia.

The task that he assigned to himself was that of a healer, and healing must be preceded by an honest diagnosis.

In a closed society, such as that of the colonial period, social diagnosis was not only taboo but was considered tantamount to political subversion. Rizal was first and foremost a Renaissance man—in the Islamic tradition he would be regarded as a ‘mutafannin,’ that is, a multifaceted man.

This is a man whose life is obsessed with the idea of universal man—a man who can soar to the realm of pure ideas, living a life devoted to beauty and goodness; a man who strives to free himself of the prejudices of race, culture and religion and seeks to cultivate the noblest elements in his inner being—justice, virtue and compassion.

Today, we associate Rizal and others—such as Muhammad Iqbal and Rabindranath Tagore—with the Asian Renaissance because we see them as transmitters of the humanitarian tradition. They not only fought for humanitarian ideals, but were able to transcend cultural specificity and inhabit the realm of universal ideas. They sought to reinvigorate the Asian self, fractured and deformed by colonialism.

To be true to Rizal’s legacy, the Asian renaissance must not be about cultural jingoism, but cultural rebirth and empowerment.

Jingoism presupposes a sense of cultural superiority and with it the assumption that others are less civilized. The natural off-shoot of cultural jingoism is cultural imperialism.

To seek cultural empowerment, on the other hand, is to bring ourselves up to a level of parity with other more self-confident cultures. It involves rediscovery of what has been forgotten through ages of weakness and decay, renewal and regeneration and it must inevitably involve a synthesis with other cultures—including those from the West.

Genuine renaissance would not be possible without the rediscovery, reaffirmation and renewed commitment to the universals within our culture, that is, the idea of human dignity founded upon spiritual substance, moral being and noble sensibility. Human dignity must be promoted in society through justice, virtue and compassion.

These, to my mind, transcend cultural and political boundaries. They belong to all, East and West, North and South.

Rizal was the first to effectively debunk the myth that was perpetuated by the colonial masters about the inferiority of the ‘Indios,’ the brown skinned natives.

The meaning of Rizal is that the exercise of power must be guided by moral ideals and the economic system should be humanized by tempering growth and equitable distribution of wealth.

Humility in cultural terms means we have to take a multi-cultural approach, and our quest towards such an approach in cultural renewal has indeed been exemplified by the lives of Asian renaissance men such as Rizal, Iqbal, and Tagore, whose cultural heritage testifies to a new Asian self-confidence and has been enriched by cross-fertilization of ideas from various cultures.

But our emphasis and focus on the cultural dimension must never be interpreted as an attempt to belittle the role of economic prosperity and political stability. Without economic well-being and stable political conditions we would not be able to talk of the very idea of an Asian renaissance. Intellectual pursuits and the encouragement of cultural creativity and expression can only take place in the context of economic prosperity and political stability.

Asian countries must have the political will to continue with economic reforms to sustain growth. Political stability must be utilized to widen the practice of democracy and to enhance the institutions of civil society. In fact the pursuit of economic prosperity cannot be separated from the quest for democracy and a healthy civil society.

Only a vibrant and functioning civil society can minimize, if not totally eliminate, excess related to power or wealth and provide the framework for a continuous battle against tyranny, corruption and moral decay.

The social cancer, as diagnosed by Rizal, is still very much us, albeit different in form and gravity. Any social cancer, be it in the form of social injustices or abuse of power, cannot be condoned.

The meaning of Rizal in the political and economic spheres is that the exercise of power must be guided by moral ideals and the economic system should be humanized by tempering growth and equitable distribution of wealth.

Our discourse on an Asian renaissance should lead us eventually to cross geopolitical barriers between societies and nations and create political structures to bring about the ‘intertraffique of the mind’ of which Rizal spoke.

Rizal had a vision but lacked the means to bring it to fruition. We today have the means and the capability to do so, as long as we have the political resolve and will. Inter Press Service.

(Anwar Ibrahim, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister of Malaysia is one of the leading voices in the debate on resurgent Asia.)

This article came out in the Philippine Graphic on June 17, 1996. Anwar Ibrahim is the current Prime Minister of Malaysia.