Book review: An Eye to China by David Selbourne

An Eye to China by David Selbourne Sangam Pages: 95; Price: Rs 18David Selbourne, author of An Eye to India, is the political commentator whose radical views and fierce opposition to the Emergency have made him popular with both, the left and the liberal. But the author of An Eye to China, is a different, disconcerting Selbourne, offering an intensely subjective view of China in a series of very wordy impressions strung together by a rather self-conscious view of how the human condition should be assessed. Selbourne went to China in 1975, already, it seems, a believer and a convert to the ways of Mao and his revolution. Hence his deliberate choice of style: the use of the poetic stanza (the dream) to impress upon us a political position (the reality). The result is a solemn church-like incantation of the faithful and at the end of the book the reader is likely to be moved to say 'Amen'. Failed: As a materialist, as one interested in the objective truths of the human condition, Selbourne could have been less believing, more critical if only because he had been forewarned of the possibility of retrogression, a la the Soviet Union, by Mao himself. The Cultural Revolution was an attempt to ensure that the revolution would not stagnate. It would unfold unceasingly until material conditions in China and the world developed sufficiently to promise the irreversibility of human and social transformation. In short, a whole decade before Selbourne's visit to China, Mao was warning that mistakes had been made and would continue to be made. He stressed the need for critical evaluation and higher expectations. This is precisely where Selbourne failed his gods. Ironically, he went to China when-or so the Chinese say now-the gang of four were in their ascendency, aborting and negating the Maoist achievement. Unfortunately, believers like Selbourne and Han Suyin did not learn the entire lesson Selbourne declares that, with our under-standing of human misery we ' . . . should know why the Chinese voice can be heard frequently speaking for those who will listen with an Indian accent'. This Chinese voice however, speaks only the partial truth. Indians do share economic and social misery with China and this economic misery has largely been alleviated there. But the alleviation of social misery encompasses much more-it encompasses freedom. And, that, as the Chinese would themselves admit, is yet to be achieved. For this to happen in China or elsewhere even a Mao needs an empathetic critic, not an unseeing believer.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Mar 31, 1979--- ENDS ---

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Book review: An Eye to China by David Selbourne

David Selbourne, author of An Eye to India, is the political commentator whose radical views and fierce opposition to the Emergency have made him popular with both, the left and the liberal. But the author of An Eye to China, is a different.

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